• She also said, ‘As long as we are in the monastery, obedience is preferable to asceticism. The one teaches pride, the other humility.’

    Sayings of Amma Syncletica

  • “He who has died to all things remembers death, but whoever is still tied to the world does not cease plotting against himself.”

    —St. John Climacus

  • If you want to change and eliminate the problems which you have encountered because of your upbringing, enter into a loving relationship with God and others [in your life], and these problems will be resolved. When I learn how to love God, and train myself to love my brother, I will change and become conformed to the image of His Son.

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality

  • If you are suffering from a trial, which you are going through because of [your] upbringing and education, and if you endure this suffering with your true self and you expose it to the light of the grace of Christ, then Scripture says to you, “That you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”(James 1:4) The following will take place: your true self will grow and become complete and lacking nothing, through this suffering.

    As for the grumbling soul, which is not joyful, but is always complaining about its upbringing in such a home, it will neither grow nor be healed.

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality

  • People look at their homes as a place to complain about and to reject, and unfortunately, in the recent days, the culture that we live in encourages more of that. But My home is a place for me to be holy, to be saintly. And if I don’t realize this, I will be lost. I’ll be truly confused. I’m not living with my family so one day I could go to another family—that’s my goal. That’s terrible, as if almost I’m not able to embrace and enjoy the life I’m living. Same thing when I’m married, same thing with my spouse, my house—I have to look at this place—this is the place of my holiness, this is the place of my purity, the place of my charity, the place of my discipline, the place of my obedience. Where else can I pray and practice real virtue, unless I am with the people that I love the most.

    —Fr. Mina Dimitri

  • 58. Any circumstance in which a man finds himself unwillingly is a prison and a punishment for him. So be content with whatever circumstances you may now be in, lest by being ungrateful you punish yourself unwittingly. This contentment can be achieved in but one way: through detachment from worldly things.

    St. Anthony the Great: On the Character of Men and on the Virtuous Life: One Hundred and Seventy Texts
    Philokalia

  • Being a human means accepting promises from other people and trusting that other people will be good to you. When that is too much to bear, it is always possible to retreat into the thought, “I’ll live for my own comfort, for my own revenge, for my own anger, and I just won’t be a member of society anymore.” That really means, “I won’t be a human being anymore.”

    You see people doing that today where they feel that society has let them down, and they can’t ask anything of it, and they can’t put their hopes on anything outside themselves. You see them actually retreating to a life in which they think only of their own satisfaction, and maybe the satisfaction of their revenge against society. But the life that no longer trusts another human being and no longer forms ties to the political community is not a human life any longer.

    Philosopher Martha Nussbaum on How to Live with Our Human Fragility

  • I’ve seen lives changed on the sick bed, monsters turn into babies on the sick bed—monsters—people that no one can talk to, and they’re babies, holding the hands of their loved ones, saying, “Forgive me, I know I was difficult. I’m sorry—you endured a lot from me. I caused you a lot of pain, and I was a monster, and I was a terrible person, and I hope God can forgive me.”

    —Fr. Paul Girguis

  • Long-suffering and readiness to forgive curb anger; love and compassion wither it. 

    —St. Thalassios the Libyan

  • For the gain from fasting will not balance the loss from anger, nor is the profit from reading so great as the harm which results from despising a brother.

    —St. John Cassian, Conferences, CHAPTER VII. How peace of mind should be sought.