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Quotes

A collection of scriptural meditations from Saints and Fathers of the Church.

Teach your mouth to say what is in your heart.

The beginning of evil is heedlessness.

But let us speak that which is good, to the edification of faith. That is, to speak only what will help to build up our neighbor in virtue; nothing more than that.

He who has put a stop to anger has also destroyed remembrance of wrongs; because childbirth continues only while the father is alive.

In general, loquacity opens the doors of the soul, and the devout warmth of the heart at once escapes. Empty talk does the same, but even more so… Empty talk is the door to criticism and slander, the spreader of false rumors and opinions, the sower of discord and strife. It stifles the taste for mental work and almost always serves as a cover for the absence of sound knowledge…

Keep the commandments, and you will find peace; love God, and you will attain spiritual knowledge.

If, wishing to correct another, you are moved to anger, you gratify your own passion. Do not lose yourself in order to save another.

He who guards his lips preserves his soul; but he who is bold with his lips dishonors himself.

A single word made the thief pure and holy, despite all his previous crimes, and brought him into paradise (cf. Luke 23:42-43). A single ill-advised word prevented Moses from entering the promised land (cf. Num. 20:12). We should not suppose, then, that garrulity is only a minor disease. Lovers of slander and gossip shut themselves out of the kingdom of heaven.

Through anger the brightness of the Holy Spirit is shut out from the soul.

Apt silence bridles anger.

Nothing is more unsettling than talkativeness and more pernicious than an unbridled tongue, disruptive as it is of the soul’s proper state. For the soul’s chatter destroys what we build each day and scatters what we have laboriously gathered together.

Struggle until death to fulfill the commandments: purified through them, you will enter into life.

Paissy the Great, having lost his temper, begged the Lord to deliver him from irritability. The Lord appeared to him and said, ‘Paissy, if thou dost not wish to get angry, desire nothing, neither criticize nor hate any man, and thou wilt have no anger.’

Do not let the sun go down on the anger of your brother (Eph. 4:26); that is, let no one be angry and enraged against his brother until the setting of the sun.

Silence of lips is better and more wonderful than any edifying conversation. Strive to acquire humility and submissiveness. Never insist that anything should be according to your will, for this gives birth to anger. Do not judge or humiliate anyone, for this gives birth to anger. Do not judge or humiliate anyone, for this exhausts the heart and blinds the mind, and thereon leads to negligence and makes the heart unfeeling.

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A person lighting a fire first has a small piece of tinder. This represents the word of the brother who has upset him. This little fire is very feeble. What significance has the word of your brother? If you put up with it you blow out the small fire, but if you begin to think to yourself, 'Why did he say that to me? I myself can answer him. If he did not want to hurt me, he wouldn't have said that and believe me, I can upset him too.' In this case, you add small pieces of wood to the fire and some other fuel like the person that lights a fire and you produce smoke which is agitation. Agitation is the movement and coming together of thoughts which stimulate the heart and make it audacious. Audacity is the taking of retribution against the person that has upset you, and this becomes insolence as Abba Mark said, 'Evil accepted in thought makes the heart audacious, but when this is revoked through prayer and hope, it makes it contrite.'

How then shall we escape the disasters that anger brings? By training the force of our feelings not to rush ahead of the power of reason.

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Archangel Michael Orthodox Church
5025 E. Mill Rd
Broadview Heights, Ohio 44147

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