SO GOOD QUOTES

  • If we have a burden beyond our bearing, we must turn to the Lord immediately — like this: ‘O Lord, I cannot even bear my own infirmities, yet now I must bear the burden of so-and-so. I cannot cope with all this responsibility. I cannot do this myself, and – because I feel I have no desire to cope either – all this weighs even more heavily on my conscience. I wish to help my fellow man, but I don’t have the means. My neighbors think that I don’t want to help, and that is an additional burden to me.

    —Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

  • People are divided in this world into good and evil, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, noble and ignoble, intelligent and fools. They do however all have one thing in common. And that is pain. Because all people, without exception, will experience pain during their lifetime. As the saying goes: ‘It’s a marvel, if someone finds happiness during their life’. Therefore, we all live in the realm of pain. We know that pain is something personal, which one has to deal with alone. It’s our cross, which we have a duty to carry, just as the Saviour of the world, Jesus, carried His Cross for our sakes. So find comfort and rest in the paternal hand, which at this time is operating on you with the instrument of pain, and be calm. Accept that it is God who sends it, make peace with it, with pain, so as to be able to deal with it.

    I know how difficult that is, but at the same time it’s for your salvation. The saints rejoiced in their sorrows; we ought to at least accept them with patience, and God won’t forget, even this small, voluntary display of patience on our part towards His will, which is what pain represents.

    When in pain, muster your spiritual strength, and try to comprehend the purpose of pain, through which God opens the Heavens for you. Do you for a moment think that He who measures the number of hairs on your head isn’t aware of the extent of your pain? He is. So, rest trustingly in our heavenly Father. Don’t not give up. With Christ, you’ll get through everything. Because you’ll become His heir and you’ll inherit the infinite riches of our common Father and God. Amen.

    —Elder Ephraim of Arizona

  • CHAPTER IX: Of another sort of dejection which produces despair of salvation.

    THERE is, too, another still more objectionable sort of dejection, which produces in the guilty soul no amendment of life or correction of faults, but the most destructive despair: which did not make Cain repent after the murder of his brother, or Judas, after the betrayal, hasten to relieve himself by making amends, but drove him to hang himself in despair.

    —St. John Cassian, Institutes

  • Life is random as it is deliberate, funny as it is tragic.

    — W.F. Gerald (Character) from The Only Living Boy in New York (2017)

  • And if there’s one thing individuals considering suicide are short on, it’s patience—because of their willfulness. They’re like passengers aboard a transcontinental airplane flight who, halfway there, decide they can’t wait any longer to land, and want to jump out. Life is like that. It’s not finished yet, You don’t know the conclusion. The part of suicidal thinking that’s not so intelligent is deciding to judge life before you’ve let God in to heal it and make it meaningful.

    —Dee Pennock, God’s Path to Sanity

  • I never believed Moravia really wanted to die (and he would express the wish in an offhand tone, as if saying “I could use a cigarette”); but I did believe he was bored, and boredom—like idleness, its sister vice—was something he disliked, even feared. Talk dispelled that fear, and for the rest of our afternoon there would be no mention of dying, not of his dying, at least.

    —William Weaver, introduction to Boredom by Alberto Moravia

  • Christian hope! How many are deprived of thee through the snares of invincible enemies! How many fall into despair and take away their own lives! Think of those who of their own free will have laid hands on themselves by hanging, by drowning themselves, or in other ways; also drunkards and others. The Lord spoke the word of promise, and His word shall be fulfilled. He speaks, and shall it not be? The Lord points to the laws of nature, to their constancy and firmness, as a proof of the faithfulness of His promises.

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

  • By perpetually trying to guarantee for ourselves a painless future, we are perpetually creating a painful present.

    —David Cain, When You Can’t Stop Looking Ahead, Look Backwards

  • If St. Paul had to learn humility through suffering for Christ’s sake, should we expect anything less? No, there is no magic wand. We grow in Christ as we love what He loves, especially in the midst of suffering.

    —Fr. Michael Gillis, Praying In The Rain – Why We Have To Suffer