• “They don’t remember something happening, but remember something not happening. They’ve missed out, and now they’re obsessed with the past that they did not live that does not exist for them.”

    commentary on The Unhappiest Person in the World | Soren Kierkegaard’s Either/Or

  • The greatest source of tears which the saints, the desert ascetics, used is weeping for sins. It is a source out of which abundant tears spring forth, for everyone who offers a true repentance with all their heart, feeling sorry for their sins, which caused all these sufferings to their compassionate Redeemer, portraying His wound before them and His open side by the spear of their sins. Therefore, you can do nothing but weep and shed tears.

    They are the tears of regret for the lost time in entertainment and the false happiness in the vain pleasures of the world.

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Pray

  • and existential questions that loom ever greater as she ages. “I was sad and frivolous, determined and listless,” she confesses at one point, reflecting on her adolescence.

    —Roger Ebert

  • “…languor of lost youth”

    —Roger Ebert

  • “How intoxicating it can be to discover one’s life as full of enigmas and possibilities, as we do when we’re young, and how melancholic it can be to reflect on the experience and find it limned out by loneliness and regret.”

    —Roger Ebert

  • “Desire is a mystery, and sex is its funeral,” remarks Parthenope at one point. But longing for her beauty to remain closed off to others—a vision to be admired, not a spectacle to be consumed—leaves her as alienated from the human experience as the timeless deities to which she’s compared.

    —Roger Ebert

  • To me, the world is transient, not the essence.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Dialogue with the Divine

  • If somebody refuses to do the will of God, let them suffer the consequences of their wrong choice. Let them suffer, but pray for them, and they will return back.

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Know the Will of God

  • Q4. How does one know what is the gift that God has given them? Is there something that is supposed to be revealed at a certain time? Is there anything one can do to speed up the process of finding our gift?

    Yes, you can pray about it and God will help you, to reveal your gift to you. Also, you can listen to the feedback other people give you. For example, people will say to you, “You have leadership qualities”;

    “You know, when I talk to you, I feel comfortable,” so perhaps your gift is counseling, or you may be good at administration. So listen to the feedback from other people.

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Know the Will of God