“Try to unlearn officiousness and curiosity; for they can spoil solitude as nothing else can.”
—St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent
Category: KNOWLEDGE
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So if a man does not watch himself well, he may begin some activity with the sole purpose of pleasing the Lord, but later, little by little, introduce into it a self-interest, which makes him find in it also a satisfaction of his own desires, and this to such an extent that the will of God becomes completely forgotten. Then he becomes so tightly bound by enjoyment of the work, that if God Himself were to hinder him in this practice, either through some illness, or through temptations from men or demons, or by some other means, he is filled with indignation, often blames one man or another for having interfered in the course of things he so loves, and sometimes even murmurs against God Himself. This is a sure sign that the disposition of his heart did not come from God, but has sprung from the rotten and corrupted root of self-love.
Unseen Warfare
Lorenzo Scupoli -
Now while the blood is hot you should make your way with vigor to better things. In this kind of life you will find much that is worth your study: the love and practice of the virtues, the forgetfulness of the passions, the knowledge of how to live and die, and a life of deep tranquility.
Indeed the state of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but the most wretched are those who are toiling not even at their own preoccupations, but must regulate their sleep by another’s, and their walk by another’s pace, and obey order in those freest of all things, loving and hating. If such people want to know how short their lives are, let them reflect how small a portion is their own.
So, when you see a man repeatedly wearing the robe of office, or one whose name is often spoken in the Forum, do not envy him: these things are won at the cost of life.
—Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It -
“If a schoolchild receives a lesson that two plus two is four year after year, but after ten years still cannot solve this simple problem, something is wrong. And if a Christian thinks of himself as still a novice ten or fifteen years after entering the Body of Christ, if year after year he still cannot fast because he is too busy trying not to devour his neighbor (at least, that is the excuse), then he should rethink his strategy. There is a strategy, right?”
—Fr. Sergei Sveshnikov -
“No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else.”
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
“The love of God is not taught. No one has taught us to enjoy the light or to be attached to life more than anything else. And no one has taught us to love the two people who brought us into the world and educated us. Which is all the more reason to believe that we did not learn to love God as a result of outside instruction.”
+St. Basil the Great -
“We cannot have trust in someone whom we know only superficially. We must know this someone, we must have created a relationship with him. In the end it is necessary to love this someone in order to have confidence in him. Our knowledge of God does not come from books, nor is it the result of reflection. To arrive at knowledge of God, it is necessary to cultivate a relationship with Him. We do not know God as an idea, as the result of a process of thought. It is something else entirely: God is known through an immediate relationship, and it is this which we must seek.”
—Alexander Schmemann -
In your life, you will be evaluated on your output. Your boss will evaluate you on your output. If you’re a writer like me, the audience will evaluate you on your output.
But your input is just as important. If you don’t have good input, you cannot maintain good output.
The problem is no one manages your input. The boss never cares about your input. The boss doesn’t care about what books you read. Your boss doesn’t ask you what newspapers you read. The boss doesn’t ask you what movies you saw or what TV shows or what ideas you consume.
But I know for a fact I could not do what I do if I was not zealous in managing high-quality inputs into my mind every day of my life. That’s why I spend maybe two hours a day writing. I’m a writer. I spend two hours a day writing, but I spend three to four hours a day reading and two to three hours a day listening to music.
People think that that’s creating a problem in my schedule, but in fact, I say, “No, no, this is the reason why I’m able to do this. Because I have constant good-quality input.” That is the only reason why I can maintain the output.
—Ted Gioia
Your output depends on your input
SO GOOD QUOTES 