• When one becomes preoccupied with theological books, one tries to teach everyone what one has learned, regretting the loss if no one benefits from the research you read in the spiritual books, and in the theological books. One might think, “If people do not benefit from what you learn, then what is the benefit?” So beware of being fought with the desire to teach others.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Monastic Treasures for All of Us

  • The person, however, must carefully choose the books they read and will be discipled unto, and must read with discernment and care, and must not adopt everything they read. For there are books, even by renowned authors, that contain unsound information. And not all books are without error.

    Therefore, the reader should place in front of themself the saying of St. Paul the Apostle, “Test all things; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil;” and the saying of St. John also, “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God.”

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Come, Follow Me

  • “Return to the readings which used to affect you in the past and to the contemplations, sermons, liturgies and hymns. Know yourself and know the things which strengthen it, and cleave to them. Do not leave your soul without wood to kindle its fire.”

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III

  • “Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.”

    H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life
    Michel Houellebecq

  • I find myself not wanting anyone to know what I’m struggling with until I can turn that struggle into medicine for others to consume, until it becomes a learned lesson, as if what I have to share only matters if a solution or teaching or proof of overcoming is embedded into it.

    Tending to the shame of stuckness
    Lisa Olivera

  • Give every truth time to send down deep roots into the heart; the main point is—to love. Nothing gives rise to such severe fits of indigestion as eating too much and too hastily. Digest every truth leisurely, if you would extract the essence of it for your nourishment, but let there be no restless self-reflective acts.

    —François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress

  • SECT.  VII.  Third Comparison, drawn from a Statue.

    If a man should find in a desert island a fine statue of marble, he would undoubtedly immediately say, “Sure, there have been men here formerly; I perceive the workmanship of a skilful statuary; I admire with what niceness he has proportioned all the limbs of this body, in order to give them so much beauty, gracefulness, majesty, life, tenderness, motion, and action!”

    What would such a man answer if anybody should tell him, “That’s your mistake; a statuary never carved that figure.  It is made, I confess, with an excellent gusto, and according to the rules of perfection; but yet it is chance alone made it. Among so many pieces of marble there was one that formed itself of its own accord in this manner; the rains and winds have loosened it from the mountains; a violent storm has thrown it plumb upright on this pedestal, which had prepared itself to support it in this place. It is a perfect Apollo, like that of Belvedere; a Venus that equals that of the Medicis; an Hercules, like that of Farnese. You would think, it is true, that this figure walks, lives, thinks, and is just going to speak. But, however, it is not in the least beholden to art; and it is only a blind stroke of chance that has thus so well finished and placed it.”

    —François Fénelon, Existence of God

  • God, who created all nature with wisdom and secretly planted in each intelligent being knowledge of Himself as its first power, like a munificent Lord gave also to us men a natural desire and longing for Him, combining it in a natural way with the power of our intelligence. Using our intelligence, we struggle so as to learn with tranquility and without going astray how to realize this natural desire. Impelled by it we are led to search out the truth, wisdom and order manifest harmoniously in all creation, aspiring through them to attain Him by whose grace we received the desire.

    —St. Maximos the Confessor, Philokalia

  • “I don’t know what I’m doing. And if you don’t know what to do, there’s actually a chance of doing something new. As long as you know what you’re doing, nothing much of interest is going to happen.”

    – Philip Glass

  • So much of how the world decides who we are depends upon how we hold ourselves.

    —Susan Dominus