SO GOOD QUOTES

Category: TEMPERANCE

  • Therefore despise the swellings and the diseases of a disordered life and a proud vanity; be troubled for no outward thing beyond its merit, enjoy the present temperately, and you cannot choose but be pleased to see that you have so little share in the follies and miseries of the intemperate world.

    —Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), Anglican bishop, who wrote some of the greatest devotional works in the English language.

  • If men did but know what felicity dwells in the cottage of a virtuous poor man, how sound his sleeps, how quiet his breast, how composed his mind, how free from care, how easy his provision, how healthful his morning, how sober his night, how moist his mouth, how joyful his heart, they would never admire the noises and the diseases, the throng of passions, and the violence of unnatural appetites, that fill the houses of the luxurious and the heart of the ambitious.

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

  • I was doing just what I pleased, and instead of being filled with happiness and wellbeing, I was miserable.

    —Thomas Merton, The Seven Story Mountain

  • A wandering mind is made stable by reading, vigil and prayer. Flaming lust is extinguished by hunger, labor, and solitude. Stirrings of anger are calmed by psalmody, magnanimity, and mercifulness. All this has its effect when used at its proper time and in due measure. Everything untimely or without proper measure is short-lived; and short-lived things are more harmful than useful.

    —Abba Evagrius the Monk

  • Every time a fast comes…they [monks and saints] don’t know what it means to gratify the desires of the flesh and I don’t know what it’s like to deny the flesh. If I’m hungry, I eat. If I’m tempted, I look.

    —Fr. Paul Girguis

  • Our desires are possible to gratify, but impossible to satisfy.

    —Jonathan Bailey, The Eternal Journey

  • “There is an equality between feeling joy with self-control and suffering pain with self-control.”

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • Far from feasting copiously, Epicurus was content with bread and water, which prevented him from starving and so abated any pain. He was not opposed to the occasional indulgence, at one point writing in correspondence, “Send me a little pot of cheese, that, when I like, I may fare sumptuously,” but once he’d sated his hunger, he thought no greater pleasure would come from actively seeking more elaborate dining.

    Hedonism holds the secret to a happier life, but not for the reasons you think

  • St. Diodochos of Photiki explains another important principal for those who tend to be very zealous:

    “It is in no way contrary to the principles of true knowledge to eat and drink from all that is set before you, giving thanks to God; for “everything is very good” (cf. Gen I.31). But gladly to abstain from eating too pleasurably or too much shows great discrimination and understanding. However, we shall not gladly detach ourselves from the pleasures of this life unless we have fully and consciously tasted the sweetness of God.”

    Notice how St. Diodochos says “gladly” to abstain and detach ourselves. This is key: we only can gladly abstain when we’ve tasted something better, “the sweetness of God.” It’s difficult to exercise self-control in the right spirit if we have not experienced the sweetness of God, or if we have forgotten our “first love” (Rev 2.4). But it’s common for those tempted by zealousness to try to jump to the top of the ladder right away, rather than going up one step at a time, to use the image of St. Dorotheos. They see that something is better, and assume they must accomplish it right away.

    Glory and Honor: Orthodox Christian Resources on Marriage

  • Let all carnal sweetness be as bitterness to you; carnal loss, as gain.

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ