“Pay attention how you live! You know who you are: the Divine greatness of God in the world. You know your rank. Live according to it. Oh man, my brother! Do never forget that you are a little god in becoming. In the creation of your Soul, you wear the living icon of God. Pay attention how you live, pay attention what you do with the Image of God from your inner self. Pay attention, oh man. Oh man! Oh man! For our life has, its, beginning on Earth but it takes us before the enlightening Face of God, for it is there where to give a response to what we have done with the Image of God in this life”.
Saint Justin Popovich of Serbia
+
“I must cut off my will: when the thought occurs to me to look at something, I should not look, or when it tells me to say something, I should not say it.”
Saint Pachomios of Chios
+
“You carry your snare everywhere and spread your nets in all places. You allege that you never invited others to sin. You did not indeed, by your words, but you have done so by your dress and your deportment… When you have made another sin in his heart, how can you be innocent? Tell me, whom does this world condemn? Whom do judges punish? Those who drink poison or those who prepare it and administer the fatal potion? You have prepared the abominable cup, you have given the death dealing drink, and you are more criminal than are those who poison the body; you murder not the body but the Soul. And it is not to enemies you do this, nor are you urged on by any imaginary necessity, nor provoked by injury, but out of foolish vanity and pride.”
Saint John Chrysostom
+
“If everyone took only what he needed and gave the rest to those in need, there would be no such thing as rich or poor.”
Saint Basil the Great
+
“Why o my Soul, are you so indifferent about yourself?”
Saint Peter of Damascus
+
“O Lord! Forgive us if we sometimes walk in pride, like little cockerels that think they are great.”
Saint Gavrilia, the Ascetic of Love
+
“It’s not your back that hurts, but the unbearable burden that you drag through life without Christ.”
Saint Luke the Surgeon, Archbishop of Simferopel
+
“There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting their time. It is possible to be a solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of his own thoughts.”
Saint Syncletica of Alexandria
+
“Therefore, guard your mind! Do not waste your time in vain! Do not listen to useless things! Do not spread rumours about each other! Keep your schedule tight! Do you have too much time? Run to your room and open a book!”
Elder Joseph of Vatopedi
+
“Stop loving yourself and you will love God.”
Saint Maximos the Confessor
+
“All that you lose in the name of God, you keep. All that you keep for your own sake, you loose. All that you give in the name of God, you will receive with interest. All that you give for the sake of your own glory and pride, you throw into the water. All that you receive from people as from God will bring you joy. All that you receive from people as from people will bring you worries.”
Saint Nikolai Velimivoric
+
“Pride is a wide-open window out of which all the virtues and good works are blown. Nothing makes us so empty towards people and so unworthy before God as pride.”
Saint Nikolai Velimivoric
+
“Be diligent and avoid idleness. For diligence is pleasing to God, so idleness on the contrary, as a source of every evil, is a sin very offensive to God.”
Saint Theophan the Recluse
+
“Changes, great changes, inner journeys must continue. Woe betide him who stays still like stagnant water.”
Saint Gavrilia, the Ascetic of Love
+
“In truth there is only one freedom – the Holy freedom of Christ, whereby He freed us from sin, from evil, from the devil. It binds us to God. All other freedoms are illusory, false, that is to say, they are all, in fact, slavery.”
Saint Justin Popovich of Serbia
+
“When you delight in hearing evil talk, be angry with yourself and not with the speaker. For listening in a sinful way makes the messenger seem sinful.”
Saint Mark the Ascetic
+
“Let us be satisfied simply with what sustains our present life, not with what pampers it.”
Saint Maximus the Confessor
+
“The walls that stand between you and truth and loom up before you like colossal mountains, which you have been trying to cross by running to the point of exhaustion, are your own creation and are more fragile than the white foam on the lake. If only you could open your eyes wide enough not to see them. Truly, the existence of these walls depends upon your seeing them. If you did not wish to see them, they would not exist.”
Saint Nikolai Velimivoric
+
“God assesses our action according to our intention; for it is said that the Lord will ‘reward you according to your heart’ (Ps. 20:4).”
Saint Mark the Ascetic
+
“A good or bad word that we say about a person, even if said in the greatest secrecy, is felt by the whole universe and by the Creator of feelings.”
Saint Nikolai Velimivoric
+
“God gives His Mercy abundantly. But it’s up to us, with our free will, whether we accept it or reject it, as well as whether we accept it whole-heartedly or hypocritically. Because on this Earth, weeds grow so quickly, they put down deep roots and spread”
Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov
+
“There is a common saying among the people: ‘Ignorance is not a sin.’ This is just not right. The only discount is that it’s a lesser sin. We will bear a corresponding answer for all our actions.”
Saint Gabriel, the New Confessor of Georgia
+
“Grace doesn’t begin to act within us unless we want it and seek it. God doesn’t want to trespass on the freedom He’s given us. Otherwise we’d all become Saints in the blink of an eye at God’s Divine command.”
Saint Theophan the Recluse
+
“Either we become the children of God, or the devil takes us!”
Elder Joseph of Vatopedi
+
“Man is placed on the road between Paradise and hell, between God and satan. Every thought and reflection of man, and every feeling of this, brings the Soul one step closer to Paradise or one step closer to hell.”
Saint Justin Popovich
+
“God and the devil are found at opposite poles. No one can turn his face to God who has not first turned his back on sin. When a man turns his face to God, all of his paths lead to God. When a man turns his face away from God, all of his paths lead to perdition. When a man finally rejects God by word and in his heart, he is no longer fit to do anything that does not serve for his complete destruction, both of his Soul and of his body.”
Saint Nikolai Velimivoric
+