• ​​In Ecclesiastes, he says:

    I have seen everything in my days of vanity: there is a just man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs life in his wickedness. Do not be overly righteous, nor be overly wise: why should you destroy yourself? Do not be overly wicked, nor be foolish: why should you die before your time? It is good that you grasp this, and also not remove your hand from the other; for he who fears God will escape them all.

    Here, by the statement “Do not be overly righteous,” he means that you should accept yourself, with your weakness and helplessness, and do not let the ideal self reject the true self, appearing to be a righteous self at all time, and do not use worldly, self-centered wisdom, with which you deceive yourself and believe that you are overly righteous.

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

  • She may say, “Until when do I continue giving him my love?” The matter, however, requires that we do not take things personally, and that we understand that his lack of expression of his feelings has something to do with his upbringing and his way of thinking about his ideal self. This understanding liberates the wife from the bonds that he does not love her, and she begins to say, “He loves me but he does not know how to express his feelings. Therefore, I will teach him how to do so, by expressing my feelings and offering him love.” My advice to you is that you should not look at this matter personally, because you will not be able to offer [him] love, except if you look at this as a matter related to his personality, education, and upbringing.

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

  • You must get rid of the thought of competition. You are to create, not to compete for what is already created.

    —Wallace D. Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich

  • “To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell.”

    —Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

  • “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”

    ―Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

  • Besides, with love one can live even without happiness.

    Notes from the Underground
    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  • And most contemptible of all it is that now I am attempting to justify myself to you.

    Notes from the Underground
    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  • Repent before the time comes when your sorrow will not make a difference. You have the opportunity now as long as you live.

    Orthodox Afterlife
    John Habib

  • The question in every life: How to truthfully discern what is from God what is obedience to Him (Lord, what do You want from me?) and what is from “this world” (and from the one behind it)? Questions about one’s calling. My own life is that of a churchman. But every year I feel more and more burdened-from weakness. Or is my real calling something different? I truly suffer from constantly asking myself this question. I live a double life-one consuming the other. Does God want this? Is this the condition of my salvation? When I ask this question, I have no answer. And I am 55!

    What else is needed? Look—all of you who rush about in vain. Do not think that something else is needed. See the fight of light with darkness, the descent into death. It is at the same time the revelation of the power of evil and its destruction. That is where one would find the answer which everyone is seeking and often finding in pitiful idols. Lazarus and Palms: “Rejoice, and again I say rejoice…” at the very beginning of Holy Week and at the same time, the onslaught of darkness. (“I am deeply grieved, even to death…” and

    “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) and of light (“Now the Son of Man has been glorified and God has been glorified in Him…”) up to the bright silence of Holy Saturday. Where else should one search for the solution to problems? Where else can one see, feel the only ray of light which illumines and solves everything?

    What God reveals to people is unheard, impossible, and the tragedy consists of this deafness. And this revelation can no longer penetrate Western life without ripping it apart. What is revealed surpasses and therefore tears apart life-the gift of joy “which nobody will take away from you.” Genuine Christianity is bound to disturb the heart with this tearing-that is the force of eschatology. But one does not feel it in these smooth ceremonies where everything is neat, right, but without eschatological “other worldliness.” This is, maybe, the basic spiritual quality of any bourgeois state of mind. It is closed to the sense of tragedy to which the very existence of God condemns us.

    I don’t know. It’s so difficult to express it, but I clearly feel that here is a different perception of life, and the bourgeois state (religious, theological, spiritual, pious, cultured, etc.) is blind to something essential in Christianity.

    —Alexander Schmemann
    Journals