SO GOOD QUOTES

  • We must learn to live each day, each hour, yes, each minute as a new beginning, as a unique opportunity to make everything new. Imagine that we could live each moment as a moment pregnant with new life. Imagine that we could live each day as a day full of promises. Imagine that we could walk through the new year always listening to the voice saying to us: “I have a gift for you and can’t wait for you to see it!” Imagine.

    Is it possible that our imagination can lead us to the truth of our lives? Yes, it can! The problem is that we allow our past, which becomes longer and longer each year, to say to us: “You know it all; you have seen it all, be realistic; the future will just be a repeat of the past. Try to survive it as best you can.” There are many cunning foxes jumping on our shoulders and whispering in our ears the great lie: “There is nothing new under the sun… don’t let yourself be fooled.”

    When we listen to these foxes, they eventually prove themselves right: our new year, our new day, our new hour become flat, boring, dull, and without anything new.

    So what are we to do? First, we must send the foxes back to where they belong: in their foxholes. And then we must open our minds and our hearts to the voice that resounds through the valleys and hills of our life saying: “Let me show you where I live among my people. My name is ‘God-with-you.’ I will wipe all the tears from your eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness. The world of the past has gone” (Revelation 21:2–5).

    —Henri Nouwen

  • The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd: the longing for impossible things; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else.

    —Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

  • Self-esteem should be destroyed by doing good in secret and by praying constantly with a contrite heart.

    —St. John of Damascus

  • Our Good Lord has made man’s life very sweet (in its proper sense – the spiritual one) but some of us turn it into hell with our miseries, by not having discarded the secular mentality so that we can confront matters spiritually. That is how we strive to “sweeten” our life (in the wrong sense) and we never want to die; instead, the more the years pass by, the more the “oh’s” of our agony increase, filling our soul with stress.

    In other words, some of us poor wretches reach such a point, that we actually strive to retain the soul inside our 100-year-old, exhausted, intravenously-supported flesh and insist that “life is sweet” while we tremble lest we die. Whereas, for one who is dead from a secular aspect but resurrected spiritually, there is absolutely no agony, fear and stress – ever – because he even awaits death joyously, knowing he will be going to Christ and will be rejoicing for living once again, as he will be living near Christ and feeling a part of the joy of Paradise while still on earth and even asking himself if there is a greater joy in Paradise than the one he is feeling here on earth.

    —St Paisios

  • To calm your restlessness,

    sit and recite the book of psalms

    and have pity and compassion

    for all those around you.

    —Evagrius of Pontus

  • “Temptations come so that hidden passions may be revealed and so that it will be possible to fight them, and so that the soul may be rid of them. They are also a sign of God’s mercy. So give yourself with trust into God’s hands and ask his help, so that he will strengthen you in your struggle. God knows how much each one can bear and allows temptations according to the measure of our strength. Remember that after temptation comes spiritual joy, and that the Lord protects them that endure temptations and suffering for the sake of His love.” 

    —Saint Nektarios of Aegina

  • St. Isaac the Syrian in his seventy-second homily tells us, “As soon as Grace sees that a little self-esteem has begun to steal into a man’s thoughts, and that he has begun to think great things of himself, She [Grace] immediately permits the temptations opposing him to gain in strength and prevail, until he learns his weakness…and seeks refuge with God in humility.”

    …

    Temptations come not to test us to see if we will be good; rather, temptations come to show us that we are not good and that we need to flee in humility to God for refuge.  Temptations come because we think we can make it through the day without God’s constant help.  Temptations come because we think a comfortable life is normal, rather than a gift from God.

    …

    St. Isaac tells us, “all thoughts that dismay and frighten you will take flight from you, since these are customarily engendered in men by thoughts that look to comfort.”  

    …

    The advice of St. Isaac is not the advice you get in the world.  The world teaches us the opposite.  The world teaches us that a comfortable life is normal, that it is normal to be fulfilled, content and satisfied.  And the world teaches us that if you are not experiencing such a happy life, it’s someone’s fault, and probably not yours.  And even though it’s not your fault, the world teaches us, that it is up to you to do something about it, to affix blame on someone, to fight for your rights, your right to a normal life as the world defines it.

    Overcoming Temptations Through Low Expectations
    Fr. Michael Gillis, Praying in the Rain

  • Making excuses is not written in the Scriptures. The Saints not only did not justify themselves, but they suffered willingly on behalf of others.

    —Saint Ephraim of Katounakia

  • What do you love doing so much that the words failure and success essentially become irrelevant?

    —Elizabeth Gilbert

  • Helplessness and isolation are the core experiences of psychological trauma. Empowerment and reconnection are the core experiences of recovery.

    —Judith L. Herman, Trauma and Recovery