Category: SUFFERING & TRIBULATION

  • “He who refused to worship idols was given over to external sufferings, while he who refuses to satisfy the passions actually wounds himself and forces his heart to suffer until the passions quiet down in him.”

    —St. Theophan the Recluse

  • “But if the future is not in my hands, then I have all the more reason to stay in the present.”

    —Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life

  • “As often as you find your way to be peaceful, without variations, be suspicious. For you are deviating from the divine ways trodden by the weary footsteps of the saints. The more you proceed on the way towards the city of the kingdom and approach its neighborhood, this will be the sign: you will meet hard temptations. And the nearer you approach, the more difficulties you will find.”

    —St. Isaac of Syria

  • “I always advise my friends: just go for a walk for an hour and come back and see how you feel then. I think we’re meant to be outdoors.”

    — Björk

  • “The path to God is a daily cross. No one has ascended to heaven by way of ease—we know where the easy way leads.”

    —St. Isaac the Syrian

  • “It is equally difficult to preserve one’s soul from despair in hard times, and to prevent it from becoming arrogant in prosperous circumstances.”

    —St. Basil the Great, On Social Justice

  • Earthly life consists of nothing but serving others, and that, in fact, there is no life other than that of serving and patiently bearing sorrow and pain.

    —Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives

  • “Ordinarily we experience no pain when the soul is sick, yet on the contrary when the body is troubled we use every means possible to relieve that trouble. For this very reason God afflicts the body because of the sins of the soul, in order to restore health to man’s most noble aspect by making use of the least noble affliction.”

    —St. John Chrysostom

  • “At a time of affliction, expect a provocation to sensual pleasure; for because it relieves the affliction it is readily welcomed.”

    —St. Mark the Ascetic

  • “We suffer more often in our imagination than in reality.”

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic