“True friendship requires closeness, affection, support, and mutual encouragement, but also distance, space to grow, freedom to be different, and solitude.”
—Henri Nouwen
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From the beginning, two inner voices have been speaking to me: one saying, “Henri, be sure you make it on your own. Be sure you become an independent person. Be sure I can be proud of you,” and another voice saying, “Henri, whatever you are going to do, even if you don’t do anything very interesting in the eyes of the world, be sure you stay close to the heart of Jesus; be sure you stay close to the love of God.”
—Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life -
“Conquer men by your gentle kindness, and make zealous men wonder at your goodness. Put the lover of justice to shame by your compassion. With the afflicted be afflicted in mind. Love all men, but keep distant from all men.”
—St. Isaac the Syrian -
“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.”
—Thomas Merton, Love and Living -
Watch yourselves—your passions especially—in your home life, where they appear freely, like moles in a safe place. Outside our own home, some of our passions are usually screened by other more decorous passions, whilst at home there is no possibility of driving away these black moles that undermine the integrity of our soul.
—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ -
“Examine yourself to see whether you have within you a strong sense of your own self-importance, or negatively, whether you have failed to realize that you are nothing. This feeling of self-importance is deeply hidden, but it controls the whole of our life. Its first demand is that everything should be as we wish it, and as soon as this is not so we complain to God and are annoyed with people.”
—St. Theophan the Recluse -
When I understood that neither parents, nor family, nor friends, nor anyone in the world could offer me anything but pain, insults, and wounds, I resolved to stop living for the world and to dedicate my few remaining days in this life to the Lord. I understood that I had no one in the world except God.
—Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives -
“The greater the intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.”
—Blaise Pascal, Pensées
SO GOOD QUOTES 