• “A small hair disturbs the eye, and a small care ruins solitude; because solitude is the banishment of thoughts and ideas, and the rejection of even laudable cares.”

    —St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • “Much time had I spent in vanity, and had wasted nearly all my youth in vain labour.”

    —St. Basil the Great

  • “When you crave the end result, the hard work becomes irrelevant.”

    —Tim Grover, Relentless

  • “Hate honor and you will be honored indeed.”

    —Abba Isaac

  • “He who hates the passions gets rid of their causes. But he who is attracted by their causes is attacked by the passions even though he does not wish it.”

    —St. Mark the Ascetic

  • By design, we must fully live the life that only we can live.  Every person that lives less than his or her potential is limiting all human potential because that person is not offering the world the fullness of his or her true self.

    More or Less: Choosing a Lifestyle of Excessive Generosity
    Jeff Shinabarger

  • “Not only do my choices and their consequences effect those around me immediately, but my choices also effect those far away and those not yet born.”

    —Fr. Michael Gillis

    “Your lives in your homes are a responsibility, and have a deep effect in the generations coming after you.”

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III

    “The life of each one of us does not end at death on this earth and birth into heaven. We place a seal on everyone we meet. This responsibility continues after death, and the living are related to the dead for whom they pray. In the dead we no longer belong completely to the world; in us the dead still belong to history. Prayer for the dead is vital; it expresses the totality of our common life.”

    —Metropolitan Anthony Bloom

    Every human being is an incalculable force, bearing within him something of the future. To the end of time, our daily words and actions will bear fruit, either good or bad; nothing that we have once given of ourselves will perish, but our words and works, handed on from one to another, will continue to do good or harm to remote generations. This is why life is a sacred thing, and we ought not to pass through it thoughtlessly, but to appreciate its value and use it so that, when we are gone, the sum total of good in the world may be greater.

    —Servant of God Elisabeth Leseur

  • “Thorns are as much a part of a rose as the flower.”

    — Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation

  • Just as people do not enter a war in order to enjoy war, but in order to be saved from war, so we do not enter this world in order to enjoy this world, but in order to be saved from it. People go to war for the sake of something greater than war. So we also enter this temporal life for the sake of something greater: for eternal life. And as soldiers think with joy about returning home, so also Christians constantly remember the end of their lives and their return to their heavenly fatherland.

    —St. Nicholas of Serbia, Thoughts on Good and Evil

  • “If you want to do something but cannot, then before God, who knows our hearts, it is as if we have done it. This is true whether the intended action is good or bad.”

    —St. Mark the Ascetic