Learn to pray; force yourself to prayer. In the beginning it will be difficult; but afterwards the more you force yourself, the easier it will be for you to pray. But in the beginning it is always necessary to force oneself.
—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ
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When you pray for the repose of the soul of the departed, force yourself to pray with your whole heart, remembering that to do so is your essential duty, mid not only that of a priest or ecclesiastic. Represent to yourself how necessary repose is to the departed one, and how greatly he (or she) needs the prayers for him (or her) of the living, being a member of the one body of the Church; how the demons are contesting his (or her) soul from the angels, and how it trembles, not knowing what its eternal destiny will be. Our prayer of faith and love for the departed means much in the Lord’s sight. Represent to yourself, further, how necessary rest is for you when you are bound by the fetters of sin, and how fervently, with what sincerity, ardor, and power you then pray to the Lord and to the Most-pure Mother of the Lord, and how you rejoice and triumph when, after your fervent prayer, you obtain the remission of your sins and peace of heart. Apply all this to the soul of the departed. His (or her) soul also needs prayer—your prayer now—because it cannot pray fruitfully any longer itself; the soul of the departed also requires the rest which you can implore for it by means of your ardent prayer, joined to works of charity for the benefit of that soul, and especially by the offering of the bloodless sacrifice on its behalf.
—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ -
When anyone, out of kindness, praises you to others, and they transmit these praises to you, do not consider them as a just tribute of esteem really due to you, but ascribe them solely to the kindness of heart of the person who thus spoke of you, and pray to God for him, that God may strengthen him in his kindness of heart and in every virtue; but acknowledge yourself to be the greatest of sinners, not out of humility, but truthfully, actually, knowing as you do your evil deeds.
—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ -
“Remember always: if your way of life is hard and sorrowful, it is correct; but if you live in comfort, wealth and honour, and still more, in carnal pleasures, you are on the road to perdition. It is quite impossible to attain serenity of mind without enduring many sorrows and depression and for many years.”
—Father Ilian of Mount Athos -
Pray for the departed as though your own soul were in hell, in the flame, and as though you yourself were in torment; feel their torments with your whole heart and pray most fervently, most ardently that they may rest in peace in the place of light and green pastures, in the place of refreshing.
—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ -
On the other hand, the cheapest form of pride is national pride; for the man affected therewith betrays a want of individual qualities of which he might be proud, since he would not otherwise resort to that which he shares with so many millions. The man who possesses outstanding personal qualities will rather see most clearly the faults of his own nation, for he has them constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool, who has nothing in the world whereof he could be proud, resorts finally to being proud of the very nation to which he belongs. In this he finds compensation and is now ready and thankful to defend, … all the faults and follies peculiar to it.
—Arthur Schopenhauer -
As the British philosopher Bertrand Russell put it in The Conquest of Happiness (1930):
A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow processes of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers as though they were cut flowers in a vase.
In 1918, Russell spent four and a half months in Brixton prison for ‘pacifist propaganda’, but found the bare conditions congenial and conducive to creativity:
I found prison in many ways quite agreeable … I had no engagements, no difficult decisions to make, no fear of callers, no interruptions to my work. I read enormously; I wrote a book, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy … and began the work for Analysis of Mind … One time, when I was reading Strachey’s Eminent Victorians, I laughed so loud that the warder came round to stop me, saying I must remember that prison was a place of punishment.
Boredom is but a window to a sunny day beyond the gloom -
“He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory -
The more we talk about things that people don’t like to talk about, the better it is for everyone.
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One of the most valuable findings from my research has been learning the distinction between joy and happiness. I go into this in more detail here, but the gist is that happiness is a state of being — longer-term and more complex — whereas joy is an emotion — immediate, momentary, and visceral. We spend a lot of time in our culture focusing on happiness and the pursuit of it. Because joy seems small, it often can be dismissed as trivial and inconsequential, making it easy to overlook.
Yet focusing on joy instead of happiness has been perhaps the single most life-changing shift to come out of my work. Because joy is small, it’s accessible. I might not know how to be happy on a particular day, but I know that I can find one or two moments of joy that I might not have had otherwise. One more moment of joy every day for a year is 365 more moments of joy, and that is significant!7 EMOTIONAL LESSONS FOR A MORE JOYFUL LIFE
By Ingrid Fetell Lee
SO GOOD QUOTES 