SO GOOD QUOTES

Category: TRANSCIENCE

  • “Not only do my choices and their consequences effect those around me immediately, but my choices also effect those far away and those not yet born.”

    —Fr. Michael Gillis

    “Your lives in your homes are a responsibility, and have a deep effect in the generations coming after you.”

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III

    “The life of each one of us does not end at death on this earth and birth into heaven. We place a seal on everyone we meet. This responsibility continues after death, and the living are related to the dead for whom they pray. In the dead we no longer belong completely to the world; in us the dead still belong to history. Prayer for the dead is vital; it expresses the totality of our common life.”

    —Metropolitan Anthony Bloom

    Every human being is an incalculable force, bearing within him something of the future. To the end of time, our daily words and actions will bear fruit, either good or bad; nothing that we have once given of ourselves will perish, but our words and works, handed on from one to another, will continue to do good or harm to remote generations. This is why life is a sacred thing, and we ought not to pass through it thoughtlessly, but to appreciate its value and use it so that, when we are gone, the sum total of good in the world may be greater.

    —Servant of God Elisabeth Leseur

  • Just as people do not enter a war in order to enjoy war, but in order to be saved from war, so we do not enter this world in order to enjoy this world, but in order to be saved from it. People go to war for the sake of something greater than war. So we also enter this temporal life for the sake of something greater: for eternal life. And as soldiers think with joy about returning home, so also Christians constantly remember the end of their lives and their return to their heavenly fatherland.

    —St. Nicholas of Serbia, Thoughts on Good and Evil

  • This is a bit of a somber exercise, but it’s very powerful:

    When you are with your spouse, significant other, best friend or a close relative, picture the moment, in all its mundane detail, as if you’re looking back on it from a point in life where that person is no longer around. No need to imagine any upsetting explanations for their absence; the part of your life that includes that special person is just over, and you are happy to have been with them while your lives overlapped.

    Observe them as if you’ve been shipped back from the future, to see them once again on an ordinary day, with absolutely no reason to take it for granted.

    You will probably feel a heavy sensation of gratitude, and you’ll find it difficult not to pay attention to the things that were said today.

    Things We Said Today
    David Cain

  • In my life, wherever I was, I accepted everything as the Will of God and lived as if I were to stay in that place forever. This is the only way God wants us to be. Never a thought about the future. The future is His! The whole earth is but a waiting room for Eternity. Are we doing what we should at every moment of our life? Do we love according to the Commandments of God? Do we follow the example of Christ? …We must think always, “How would I behave if Christ were here, visible, near us, everywhere and at all times?” This should be the way of our life… Do not think about tomorrow, for “the morrow will take care of itself.” He Who has freed you from bondage will – if you believe – guide you, like Moses, to the Promised Land… Have no fear… If you have faith, follow the Good Shepherd and everything will be joy, peace, tranquility, and love for everyone and everything.

    —Mother Gavrilia (The Ascetic of Love)

  • “How long shall we live uselessly and in vain? Because, not to do what is well-pleasing to God is to live uselessly, or rather not merely uselessly, but to our own hurt; for when we have spent the time which has been given us on no good purpose, we shall depart this life to suffer severest punishment for our unseasonable extravagance.”

    — St. John Chrysostom

  • “You ask about eternal life, yet show yourself completely bound to the enjoyment of this present life.”

    —St. Basil the Great, On Social Justice

  • The one who is a stranger here will be a citizen up there; the one who is a stranger here will not be happy to live among present realities, will not be concerned for dwellings, money, food, anything else of that kind. Instead, just as people living in foreign parts do everything and busy themselves with a view to their return to their homeland, and daily strive to see the land that bore them, so too those in love with future realities are neither dejected by present griefs nor buoyed up by success, but ignore both like a traveler on the road.

    —St. John Chrysostom

  • Hold fast to your purpose and do not look back. We have been given a warning example in Lot’s wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back [Genesis 19:26]. You have cast off your old humanity; let the rags lie.

    Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth
    Tito Colliander

  • We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us. We conceal it from our sight, because it troubles us, we regret to see it pass away. We try to sustain it by the future, and think of arranging matters which are not in our power, for a time which we have no certainty of reaching.

    Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.

    Pensées
    Blaise Pascal

  • “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.”

    —Seneca, Great Ideas On the Shortness of Life