Thomas Carlyle, great Victorian, came one day home from the Church on a Sunday morning in a bad temper and he said to his mother: “I cannot think why they preach such a long sermon. If I were a minister, I would go up into the pulpit and say no more than this: Good people, you know what you ought to do, now go and do it!”

Discovering the Inner Kingdom by Bishop Kallistos Ware

All of a sudden, something began to stir within me, something began to push me, to prompt me. It was a movement that spoke like a voice.

“What are you waiting for?” it said. “Why are you sitting here? Why do you still hesitate? You know what you ought to do? Why don’t you do it?“

Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain

“Always do everything according to your conscience!”

—Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev) of Bogucharsk

Psalms 119:99

I have more understanding than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my meditation.

Luke 24:45

And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures

Psalms 119:99

I have more understanding than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my meditation.

whatever mad or chaotic things you do, never forget that there is your ultimate wisdom that must keep you safe and whole. …

—May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

Scripture says that seven spirits will rest upon the Lord: the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of spiritual knowledge, the spirit of cognitive insight, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of strength, and the spirit of the fear of God (cf. Isa. 11:2). The effects produced by these spiritual gifts are as follows: by fear, abstention from evil; by strength, the practice of goodness; by counsel, discrimination with respect to the demons; by cognitive insight, a clear perception of what one has to do; by spiritual knowledge, the active grasping of the divine principles inherent in the virtues; by understanding, the soul’s total empathy with the things that it has come to know; and by wisdom, an indivisible union with God, whereby the saints attain the actual enjoyment of the things for which they long. He who shares in wisdom becomes god by participation and, immersed in the ever-flowing, secret outpouring of God’s mysteries, he imparts to those who long for it a knowledge of divine blessedness.

—St Maximos the Confessor, Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice Third Century