• “It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.”

    —Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

  • Know that the desire to be perfect is probably the veiled expression of another desire—to be loved, perhaps,

    How to Be Perfect
    by RON PADGETT

  • “You’re unhappy because you’re not in alignment with who you are. Not because of what anyone else is doing.”

    —Maryam Hasnaa

  • “Believe that others are better than you in the depths of their soul, although outwardly you may appear better than they.”

    —St. Augustine

  • “Everyday I say to myself, today I will make a new start.”

    —St. Anthony the Great

  • Abba Paphnutius, the disciple of Abba Macarius [the city-dweller], said that the elder used to say: “When I was a child, I and the other children used to pasture cattle and they went off to steal some figs. One [fig] fell as they were running along: I took it and ate it and, when I recall that, I sit weeping.”

    Give Me a Word: The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers

  • Abba Joseph says to Abba Nisteros: “What am I to do with my tongue for I cannot control it?” The elder said to him: “So when you speak, do you experience repose?”  “No,” he said to him, and the elder said: “If you do not experience repose, why do you speak? Better to keep quiet; and if a conversation is taking place, hear a great deal rather than speak.”

    Give Me a Word: The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers

  • “If you want to find rest in this life and the next, say at every moment, ‘Who am I?’ and judge no one.”  

    —Abba Poemen

  • “Run away the first time; run away the second time; the third time, become a sword.”

    —Abba Poemen

  • The holy fathers of Scete predicted concerning the last generation, saying: “What have we accomplished?” In reply one of them, great in life and name, Abba Ischyrion, said: “We have carried out the commandments of God.”  In reply the elders said: “But those who come after us, what will they accomplish?” He said: “They are going to attain the half of what we have done.” They said: “And what of those after them?” and he said: “Those of that generation will do no work at all. Temptation is going to come upon them and those who are found to be tried and tested in that age will be found greater both than us and than our fathers.”

    Give Me a Word: The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers