SO GOOD QUOTES

Category: TEMPERANCE

  • Those who have not found Christ live in this life without hearty faith; they think and care more about worldly things—how to enjoy themselves, how to eat and drink pleasurably, how to dress exquisitely, how to satisfy their carnal desires, how to kill time, with which they do not know what to do, though time seeks them and, not finding them, quickly flies away before their eyes. Day flies away after day, night after night, month after month, year after year, until, finally, the last terrible hour strikes, and they hear a voice: “Stop, the course is finished; your time has been lost; your sins and iniquities have preceded you; they will fall upon you with all their power, and will crush you with their weight eternally.”

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

  • “We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”

    —Jim Rohn

  • Just as the intellect of a hungry man imagines bread and that of a thirsty man water, so the intellect of a glutton imagines a profusion of foods.

    —St Maximos the Confessor, Four Hundred Texts on Love

  • “If you have all pleasure, then life is miserable. If you have no pleasure, life is miserable.”

    —Ryan Nicodemus

  • This exceedingly simple outer life reflected a far more severe inner life. It was well known that Kyrillos slept little. But just how little is for the most part unknown. Each day he would awake at three in the morning for psalmody and Liturgy that would finish some five hours later. The entire day, until late, would be spent in meetings and visits, only to be interrupted by “his work” of Vespers at six in the evening. Most nights he would retire to his patriarchal cell just before midnight. This would allow for three to four hours of sleep at most. Yet even this is called into question. An examination of his letters (unpublished and thus unknown until now) reveals that if a time of writing as specific, then it was consistently between the hours of one to two in the morning. Even the few hours of sleep, it appears, would be regularly sacrificed.

    A Silent Patriarch: Kyrillos VI (1902 -1971), Life and Legacy
    Fr. Daniel Fanous

  • “Some have melted their bodies with asceticism, but because they lacked discretion, they were found to be far from God.”

    —St. Anthony the Great 

  • Be severe in your judgment concerning your proportions, and let no occasion make you enlarge far beyond your ordinary. For a man is surprised by parts; and while he thinks one glass more will not make him drunk, that one glass hath disabled him from well discerning his present condition and neighbour danger. 

    —Rev. Jeremy Taylor, On Christian Sobriety -Rules for obtaining temperance., The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, Volume 3. THE RULE AND EXERCISES OF HOLY LIVING AND DYING….: The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying

  • Do not believe your flesh when it threatens to you with weakness during prayer; it lies. As soon as you begin to pray you will find that the flesh will become your obedient slave. Your prayer will vivify it also. Always remember that the flesh is lying.

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

  • [The insensitive man] He has plenty to say about self-control and fights for a gourmet life…He recites what he has learnt about keeping vigil, and at once drops off to sleep.

    —St. John Climacus

  • …that which is enough for health is too little for delight, and that which is for my delight destroys my health, and still it is uncertain for what end I do indeed desire; and the worst of the evil is this, that the soul is glad because it is uncertain, and that an excuse is ready, that under the pretence of health, the design of pleasure may be advanced and protected.
    —St. Austin

    [from —Rev. Jeremy Taylor, The House of Feasting .The Whole Works of the Rt. Rev. Jeremy Taylor, Volume 1]