SO GOOD QUOTES

  • “We usually criticize others when we’ve ceased to control ourselves.”

    — Saint Theophan the Recluse

  • Committed to silence, and meditating for long stretches, one’s mind really slows down compared to normal. The urge to explain oneself subsides, the urge to comment and criticize subsides, and you finally realize the obscene volume of chatter that goes on in there on a regular day.

    —David Cain, What Five Days of Silence Taught Me

  • When you have to speak, before expressing what has entered your heart and letting it pass to your tongue, examine it carefully and you will find many things that are better not let past your lips. Know moreover that many things, which it seems to you good to express, are much better left buried in the tomb of silence. Sometimes you will yourself realise this, immediately the conversation is over.

    Unseen Warfare
    Lorenzo Scupoli

  • Empty talk is the door to criticism and slander, the spreader of false rumours and opinions, the sower of discord and strife. It stifles the taste for mental work and practically always serves as a cover for the absence of sound knowledge. When wordy talk is over, and the fog of self-complacency lifts, it always leaves behind a sense of frustration and indolence. Is it not proof of the fact that, even involuntarily, the soul feels itself robbed?

    Unseen Warfare
    Lorenzo Scupoli

  • You will get as many opinions – if not more – from the number of people you talk to.


    —Fr. Antony Paul, Discerning God’s Will

  • “We should never talk aloud or at length with others about something we really want to happen or to achieve. Satan overhears and puts obstacles in the way. Only God knows your secret thoughts; the evil one knows only what we tell him.”

    —Hieromonk Chrysostomos Stavronikitianos

    Whatever you say out loud, the devil is listening. It’s not just God that hears you, the devil hears you too—he’s got demons everywhere. So when he hears that you like something, he will mimic it and do it as well to either push you towards something wrong, or to push you in all directions just to make you so confused, so tired and exhausted, that you give up in despair.

    —Fr. Antony Paul, Discerning God’s Will

  • To You, O Lord, do I complain, and only You are able to console and strengthen me as You save me. You alone! As the saying goes, complaints to anyone other than God are humiliation. When I speak with You, I find comfort. I find comfort within me, reassured of Your work and intervention. I also find external comfort, as a result of Your work for me. You are the compassionate bosom on which I recline, and ask “Why?”, or, “How can this happen?” “O Lord, those who afflict me have multiplied.” Certainly, O Lord, You are not one of them, because You are my consolation and salvation.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Dialogue with the Divine

  • “Sometimes I will think of something to say and then I ask myself: is it worth it? And it just isn’t.”

    — Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

  • “Often I regret what I’ve said, but I have never regretted my silence.”

    —St. Arsenius

  • “If God is speaking explicitly, you will know.”

    —Fr. Antony Paul