• “The question of where to live and what to do is really insignificant compared to the question of how to keep the eyes of my heart focused on the Lord. I can be teaching at Yale, working in the bakery at the Genesee Abbey, walking with poor children in Peru, or writing a book, and still feel totally useless.”

    —Henri Nouwen

  • A famous Christian long ago told us that when he was a young man he prayed constantly for chastity; but years later he realised that while his lips had been saying, “Oh Lord, make me chaste,” his heart had been secretly adding, “But please don’t do it just yet.”

    —C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

  • “Do not give from your abundance, but from your needs.”

    —Fr. Kyrillos Said

  • Stop pleasing yourself and you will not hate your brother; stop loving yourself and you will love God.”

    —St. Maximos the Confessor

  • “In an ordinary journey, the further the traveler proceeds, the more tired he becomes; but on the way of spiritual life the longer a man travels, reaching forth unto those things which are before, the greater the strength and power he acquires for his further progress.”

    —Saint Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain

  • “As often as you find your way to be peaceful, without variations, be suspicious. For you are deviating from the divine ways trodden by the weary footsteps of the saints. The more you proceed on the way towards the city of the kingdom and approach its neighborhood, this will be the sign: you will meet hard temptations. And the nearer you approach, the more difficulties you will find.”

    —St. Isaac of Syria

  • If the path toward heavenly bliss seems difficult, compare it with the path toward earthly happiness, and you will see that the path toward earthly happiness is not really easier at all. Just observe how much people toil to amass earthly things, how many disappointments, fights, sleepless nights and deprivations they bear. Or remind yourself of how much effort and expenses it takes to achieve some meaningless and fleeting pleasure! And for what? Instead of the expected happiness, you are left with disappointment and weariness. When you carefully examine the heart of the matter, it becomes evident that people stay away from the Heavenly Kingdom not because the path to it is more difficult than the other paths of this world, but because it appears that way to them.

    —St. Innocent of Alaska, The Way Into the Kingdom of Heaven

  • “I’ve found that if I say what I’m really thinking and feeling, people are more likely to say what they really think and feel. The conversation becomes a real conversation.”

    —Carol Gilligan

  • “Do you know why the Church, when arranging prayer, arranges for us seven prayers everyday–and between one prayer and another prayer, there are three hours? The Church wants us to be in continuous relationship with God, and wants us not to spend a maximum of more than three hours without communicating with God. If we are doing this, we will not be lukewarm. Yes maybe we have–like in meals–we have two or three meals a day but between meals we have snacks. In the same way in the spiritual life, maybe we have one or two or three prayers, in the morning, in the evening, and at night but between these three spiritual meals we need to have spiritual snacks. So every three hours or every two hours, lift your heart to God. Even with one sentence, even if two sentences, but from your heart–the tax collector, with one sentence, was justified and the right hand thief, with one sentence entered paradise. Keep God on your mind all day long, every now and then lift your heart to God in prayer.”

    —H.G. Bishop Youssef

  • “Always let the remembrance of death and the Prayer of Jesus said as a monologue go to sleep with you and get up with you; for you will find nothing to equal these aids during sleep.”

    —St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent