• “God saves one man through spiritual knowledge and another through guilelessness and simplicity. You should  bear in mind that God will not reject the simple.”

    —St. John of Karpathos

  • The parable about the talents offers the thought that life is a time for trading.

    That means that it is necessary to hasten to use this time as a person would hurry to a market to bargain for what he can. Even if one has only brought bast shoes, or only bast, (very inexpensive, unsophisticated items) he does not sit with his arms folded, but contrives to call over buyers to sell what he has and then buy for himself what he needs.

    No one who has received life from the Lord can say that he does not have a single talent—everyone has something, and not just one thing; everyone, therefore, has something with which to trade and make a profit.

    Do not look around and calculate what others have received, but take a good look at yourself and determine more precisely what lies in you and what you can gain for that which you have, and then act according to this plan without laziness.

    At the Judgment you will not be asked why you did not gain ten talents if you had only one, and you will not even be asked why you gained only one talent on your one, but you will be told that you gained a talent, half a talent or a tenth of its worth.

    And the reward will not be because you received the talents, but because you gained.

    There will be nothing with which to justify yourself—not with nobleness, nor poverty, nor lack of education. When this is not given, there will be no question about it.
    But you had hands and feet. You will be asked, what did you gain with them?

    You had a tongue, what did you gain with it?
    In this way will the inequalities of earthly states be leveled out at God’s judgment.

    —St. Theophan the Recluse, Thoughts for Each Day of the Year: According to the Daily Church Readings from the Word of God

  • “When there is no human being that can bring us comfort, then God comes and brings us joy through a book.”

    — Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

  • “When we demand respect and attention from others, they usually turn their backs on us; but when we give no thought to the respect of others and care nothing about it, then people flock around us and follow us.”

    —Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

  • When pride can’t get people to expect extravagant things of themselves, it does something that may be even worse. It makes them feel they ought to be doing certain fine and marvelous things, and makes them feel hopeless and guilty because they aren’t doing any of them. Like a cruel man overburdening a horse, pride piles heavy false obligations on us until we are nearly crumpled beneath the load. These false obligations are our “shoulds”—the things we have become convinced we “should” do by ourselves. We should avoid offending any other human being. We should make something of ourselves in the world. We should be tolerant and understanding. We should be considerate, generous, kind, and sacrificing. We should love and take care of everybody. We should accept full responsibility for everyone who’s unhappy. And so it goes, one devastating obligation after another. Pride makes people condemn and punish themselves unmercifully when they can’t meet such obligations. Many of the things pride may suggest to you are all right in themselves, but they’re things which are impossible for you to do with your particular personality, or impossible for you to do without growing a great deal spiritually, or impossible for you to do because God has something different in mind for you. And of course every one of them is impossible for you to do by yourself, without God. That’s the real catch with false obligations.

    Sometimes pride will let a person think he’s meeting these false obligations well for quite a long time, let him bask in a feeling of personal success, and only then will pull the rug out from under him and point out what a lousy job he’s really been doing. Then a feeling of worthlessness, and often a feeling of being hopelessly doomed to failure, will start building up in a person. Catching false obligations early is a big help. Any time you have even a small feeling of guilt or failure or worthlessness that you can’t seem to get out from under, pray to be delivered from pride and false obligations—and keep praying, no matter how long it takes, until the false obligation that has caused your guilt or failure feeling becomes revealed to you so you can dump it. Praying for deliverance from pride always finally exposes any false obligations you may have and shatters your tyrannical fake conscience.

    Who is God? Who Am I? Who Are You?
    Dee Pennock

  • He who shows off great learnedness shall be put to shame.

    —St. Theophan the Recluse, The Path to Salvation: A Manual of Spiritual Transformation

  • Thus, the inner ascent from zeal to zealous dedication to God is nothing other than the revelation and appearance to our consciousness of God’s work in us, or the working of our salvation and purification. The zealot becomes enlightened about this reality through frequent failures met in spite of all his efforts, and unexpected and great successes met without particularly trying. Mistakes and falls are especially enlightening as they bereave us of grace. All of these bring a man to the thought and belief that he is nothing, while God and His all-mighty grace are everything.

    St. Theophan the Recluse, The Path to Salvation: A Manual of Spiritual Transformation

  • One of the great obstacles to preserving inner peace, my brother, is binding yourself as by some immutable law, by a set rule, to read so many Psalms and so many chapters from the Gospels and Epistles. Those who set such rules to themselves, are usually in a hurry to complete the reading, not concerning themselves as to whether the heart is touched by it or not, or whether spiritual thoughts and contemplations arise in the mind; and when they fail to finish the reading, they are agitated and worried, not because they were deprived of the spiritual fruit of reading, which they need in order to create a new man in themselves, but simply because not everything was read. Listen to what St. Isaac has to say about this (ch. 30): ‘ If you wish to gain delight in reading texts and understand the words of the Spirit you utter, brush aside the quantity and number of verses, so that your mind could be absorbed in studying the words of the Spirit, until, filled with wonder at the Divine dispensation, your soul is incited to a lofty understanding of them and is thus moved to praise of God or to sorrow that profits the soul. Slavish work brings no peace to the mind; and anxiety usually deprives the reason and understanding of the power of taste, and robs the thoughts like a leech, which sucks life from the body along with the blood of its members.’

    Unseen Warfare
    Lorenzo Scupoli

  • “A bit of philosophizing leads to a wonderment of life. A lot of philosophizing leads to a contempt of it.”

    —Eugene Thacker, Infinite Resignation: On Pessimism

  • I used to feel that so many great things had already been produced in the world and that there was nothing I could add. I was so worried about what other people would think, that I developed an oversized fear of making mistakes. If I came up with a great idea, I’d reject it because it came from me.

    Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism
    Fumio Sasaki