You must share everything, joys and sorrows alike. The Holy Sacrament of Marriage has indeed made all common to both of you. This is equally important towards the daily obligations and duties; it is the only way that a strong foundation will be built for your marriage.
—St. Gregory the Theologian
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“If you do not have the strength to undergo the labor, then do not go looking for a woman.”
—Abba Olympius -
“There must be a time of day when the man who makes plans forgets his plans, and acts as if he had no plans at all.
There must be a time of day when the man who has to speak falls very silent. And his mind forms no more propositions, and he asks himself: Did they have a meaning?
There must be a time when the man of prayer goes to pray as if it were the first time in his life he had ever prayed; when the man of resolutions puts his resolutions aside as if they had all been broken, and he learns a different wisdom: distinguishing the sun from the moon, the stars from the darkness, the sea from the dry land, and the night sky from the shoulder of a hill.”
—Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island -
“When you perceive in yourself something worthy of praise, and you feel a desire to tell others about it, try immediately to destroy this desire with the thought that you will not receive any benefit from relating it, but only harm.”
—Metropolitan Gregory (Postnikov) of St. Petersburg, How to Live a Holy Life -
The spiritual man does not say all that comes to his mind from words or ideas. He weighs each word before he utters it. His scale does not stop at the essence of the word, if it is right or wrong in itself… But his concern is also about the effect of the word on others, its reactions and the result of that.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, The Spiritual Man
SO GOOD QUOTES 