Just as crimes, even if they have not been detected when they were committed, do not allow anxiety to end with them; so with guilty pleasures, regret remains even after the pleasures are over.
—Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
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Fortune has no jurisdiction over character. Let him so regulate his character that in perfect peace he may bring to perfection that spirit within him which feels neither loss nor gain, but remains in the same attitude, no matter how things fall out. A spirit like this, if it is heaped with worldly goods, rises superior to its wealth; if, on the other hand, chance has stripped him of a part of his wealth, or even at all, it is not impaired.
—Seneca, Letters from a Stoic -
“If a schoolchild receives a lesson that two plus two is four year after year, but after ten years still cannot solve this simple problem, something is wrong. And if a Christian thinks of himself as still a novice ten or fifteen years after entering the Body of Christ, if year after year he still cannot fast because he is too busy trying not to devour his neighbor (at least, that is the excuse), then he should rethink his strategy. There is a strategy, right?”
—Fr. Sergei Sveshnikov -
“We spent time talking about the gift of the Sabbath, and the actual aim of Lent — which isn’t to give up something you love, but give up something that you grasp in times of turmoil or indecision or boring, as a coping mechanism, instead of confronting what’s actually going on. You don’t give up chocolate cake because God doesn’t want you have things that you love. You give up chocolate cake if it’s what you turn towards instead of God.“
switching between inboxes until i pass out
Anne Helen Petersen -
“Rather, our problem is that we pay too much attention to resisting sin and not enough attention to fleeing to Christ.”
—Fr. Michael Gillis -
“Through humility the saint makes himself almost unobserved, but he appears when there is need for consolation, for encouragement or help. For him no difficulty is insurmountable, because he believes firmly in the help of God sought through prayer. He is the most human and humble of beings, yet at the same time of an appearance that is unusual and amazing and gives rise in others to the sense of discovering in him, and in themselves too, what is truly human. He is a presence simultaneously most dear, and unintentionally, most impressing, the one who draws the most attention. For you he becomes the most intimate one of all and the most understanding; you never feel more at ease than near him, yet at the same time he forces you into a corner and makes you see your moral inadequacies and failings.”
—Dumitru Staniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: The Experience of God, Vol. 1: Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune God
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“Every single thing you do is work on a physical level. Every single thing you do is work. To get up and eat, you did work. Like, even that was a work right. I think the sensitivity is about merit. Is this concern about earning it, as though you weren’t good enough to have it, and I think that’s where the conversation went wrong. Like, am I? Did I earn it by being good enough for God to give me money? Right? And that’s the age old fight between, like, the Protestants and traditional Christianity, where it’s like, I don’t think anyone’s actually fighting about that, right? What we’re saying is, if you don’t eat, you die, right? Like, that’s what we’re saying. We’re not saying if you’re good enough, you eat. We’re saying you must eat, right? And that you have to eat him. And he gave himself, we didn’t give him, right? And so that differentiation maybe matters, like philosophically. But no, I don’t think it was actually making the argument right, actually making the argument about that. And I get, I guess I get, that there can be a mistakenness Even with what I’m saying, that when I’m saying, you have to work to receive grace, I have not once said that you You’ve earned it right or deserved it, right? That’s not a that’s not a thing, right? And that’s why, that’s what I’m saying with God, one out of 100 is amazing, right? Good job buddy, right? Like, that’s why he doesn’t have this scale that we created. But he’s saying, but participate with me, right? That this is, this is all for us.
And so grace can come as different gifts, right? And so, like the things we’re talking about yesterday, God can grace you with these things, right? So if you had, if you were cognitively, the reason for your falls or incapacity or your weakness is cognitive. grace can fix that.”
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Or in surveying cities and spots of interest? All your bustle is useless. Do you ask why such flight does not help you? It is because you flee along with yourself. You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.
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You wander hither and yon, to rid yourself of the burden that rests upon you, though it becomes more troublesome by reason of your very restlessness.
Seneca, XXVIII. On Travel as a Cure for Discontent, Letters from a Stoic
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Our life is children’s play, only not innocent, but sinful, because, with a strong mind, and with the knowledge of the purpose of our life, we neglect this purpose and occupy ourselves with frivolous, purposeless matters. And thus our life is childish, unpardonable play. We amuse ourselves with food and drink, gratifying ourselves by them, instead of only using them for the necessary nourishment of our body and the support of our bodily life. We amuse ourselves with dress, instead of only decently covering our body and protecting it from the injurious action of the elements. We amuse ourselves with silver and gold, admiring them in treasuries, or using them for objects of luxury and pleasure, instead of using them only for our real needs, and sharing our superfluity with those in want. We amuse ourselves with our houses and the variety of furniture in them, decorating them richly and exquisitely, instead of merely having a secure and decent roof to protect us from the injurious action of the elements, and things necessary and suitable for domestic use. We amuse ourselves with our mental gifts, with our intellect, imagination, using them only to serve sin and the vanity of this world—that is, only to serve earthly and corruptible things—instead of using them before all and above all to serve God, to learn to know Him, the all-wise Creator of every creature, for prayer, supplication, petitions, thanksgiving and praise to Him, and to show mutual love and respect, and only partly to serve this world, which will some day entirely pass away. We amuse ourselves with our knowledge of worldly vanity, and to acquire this knowledge we waste most precious time, which was given to us for our preparation for eternity. We frequently amuse ourselves with our affairs and business, with our duties, fulfilling them heedlessly, carelessly, and wrongfully, and using them for our own covetous, earthly purposes. We amuse ourselves with beautiful human faces, or the fair, weaker sex, and often use them for the sport of our passions. We amuse ourselves with time, which ought to be wisely utilised for redeeming eternity, and not for games and various pleasures. Finally, we amuse ourselves with our own selves, making idols out of ourselves, before which we bow down, and before which we expect others to bow down. Who can sufficiently describe and deplore our accursedness, our great, enormous vanity, the great misery into which we voluntarily throw ourselves?
—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ
SO GOOD QUOTES 