SO GOOD QUOTES

  • Damage (1992)

  • Parthenope (2024)

  • He who honors celibacy and virginity must keep his loins girded and his lamp burning (cf. Luke 12:35). He keeps his loins girded through self-control, and his lamp burning through prayer, contemplation and spiritual love.

    —St. Maximos the Confessor, Four Hundred Texts on Love

  • 56. When the body is urged by the senses to indulge its own desires and pleasures, the corrupted intellect readily succumbs and assents to its impassioned fantasies and impulses. But the regenerated intellect exercises self-control and withholds itself from them. Moreover, as a true philosopher it studies how to rectify such impulses.

    —St. Maximos the Confessor, Four Hundred Texts on Love

  • 167. When images of some sensual pleasure arise in you, watch yourself so as not to be carried away by it. Pause a little, think about death, and reflect how much better it is consciously to overcome this illusory pleasure. 

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

  • 164. A man knows God and is known by Him in so far as he makes every effort not to be separated from God; and he will succeed in this if he is good in every way and refrains from all sensual pleasure, not because he lacks the means to indulge such pleasure, but because of his own determination and self-control. 

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

  • 163. If you are conscious of sinful actions in yourself, cut the sinfulness out of your soul by thinking of the blessings that you hope to receive. For God is just and compassionate.

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

  • 92. Our God has granted immortality to those in heaven, but for those on earth He has created mutability, giving life and movement to the whole of creation; and all this for man’s sake. So do [V1] 344 St Antony the Great On the Character of Men and on the Virtuous Life One Hundred and Seventy Texts not be ensnared by the worldly fantasies of the demon who insinuates evil recollections into the soul, but immediately call to mind the blessings of heaven and say to yourself: ‘If I so wish, it is in my power to win even this struggle against passion; but I shall not win if I am set on fulfilling my own desire.’ So struggle in this way, since it can save your soul. 

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

  • The Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating. It means that you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasures of taste without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again.

    —C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity