The ancients knew too that one way of overcoming acedia [despondency] is to ridicule it by continually postponing flight until later; this is how one manages to remain faithful for one’s whole life!
It was said of Abba Theodore and Abba Lucius, both from Ennaton, that they spent fifty years ridiculing their own thoughts by saying: “After this winter we will depart from here.” And when summer returned, they would say, “After this summer, we will depart from here.” And that is what they did their whole life long, those memorable Fathers.
The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times
Jean-Charles Nault
-
-
“Regardless of my transient joys, I am never free of a feeling of melancholy which somehow forms the base of my heart.”
—Frederic Chopin, from Franz Liszt’s Frederic Chopin, trans. Edward N. Waters (Collier-Macmillan, 1963) -
But now I often lament and grieve over my unhappiness, for many evils befall me in this vale of miseries, often disturbing me, making me sad and overshadowing me, often hindering and distracting me, alluring and entangling me so that I neither have free access to You nor enjoy the sweet embraces which are ever ready for blessed souls. Let my sighs and the manifold desolation here on earth move You.
—Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ -
We need to view the past as a book to be learned from, not a place we want to go. If we learn from it the right way, then we find the things that were most noble or choice-worthy about our past, individually or collectively. And then talk about how to recover that in a new fashion that takes us to places we couldn’t go otherwise.
Look, I’m nostalgic about times that I know I was miserable at the time, but I feel nostalgic about them now. It’s just the way our mind relates—in a way, it’s a good things—it helps us put into perspective things we didn’t appreciate at the time, but it’s also very risky.
—Mayor Pete Buttigieg -
(I long for someone to invent a punctuation mark for despondency…)
—Eugene Thacker, Infinite Resignation: On Pessimism -
“What I realized after talking to him, and many of my more cynical friends, is that most people who claim to possess nihilistic tendencies actually care a hell of a lot. Their empathy levels are off the charts.”
—Eugene Thacker, There’s Always Death To Look Forward To -
Confusion, frustration, depression, spite. Confusion about what I am supposed to do, frustration at my conditions, depression at feeling frustrated and confused, and a general spitefulness towards the world and all people. Every day. Only going for walks and writing in this pedantic notebook help, a little.
—Eugene Thacker, Infinite Resignation: On Pessimism -
“A lot of the people we admire the most are the loneliest, weirdest, strangest, most miserable people ever.”
—Sarah Peck -
“Sadness purifies us. Man is truly man in sadness. In joy he is changed, he becomes someone else. In sadness he becomes that which he truly is. And this is the way, par excellence, that he approaches God. He senses his weakness. Many times, when he is in glory and joy, he feels that he is the “eye of the earth” or, if you prefer, the center of the universe: “I am, and nobody else!” In pain and sadness he feels like an insignificant ant in the universe, that he is completely dependent, and he seeks the help and companionship of God. Those of us who have passed through pains, either psychical or physical, know that we never prayed as hard and with such quality and length, as we did when we were in the bed of pain or when some heavy psychical sadness tested us. While, when we have everything, we forget prayer and fasting, and many things. It is for this reason that God allows pain.”
—Elder Epiphanios -
Melancholy links pain with wisdom and beauty. It springs from a rightful awareness of the tragic structure of every life. We can, in melancholy states, understand without fury or sentimentality, that no one truly understands anyone else, that loneliness is universal and that every life has its full measure of shame and sorrow. The wisdom of the melancholy attitude lies in the understanding that we have not been singled out, that our suffering belongs to humanity in general. Melancholy is marked by an impersonal take on suffering. It is filled with pity for the human condition.
THE BOOK OF LIFE, CHAPTER 5: CULTURE: TRAVEL, The Wisdom of Nature
SO GOOD QUOTES 