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Quotes

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

The man who follows Christ in solitary mourning is greater than he who praises Christ amid the congregation of men.

Pride is known by its deeds as a tree is known by its fruits.

Where a fall has overtaken us, there pride has already pitched its tent; because a fall is an indication of pride.

Know that if your thought leads you to look at how others live, this is a sign of pride.

Keep a strict watch against any appearance of pride: it appears imperceptibly, particularly in time of vexation and irritability against others for quite unimportant causes.

The Holy Fathers say, 'Pride goeth before a fall, and humility before grace.' Whereas faintheartedness is the mother of impatience.

Go to the tombs and see that the assurance of men is nothing. Why then does man who is dust indulge in vainglory? Why does he who is all stench exalt himself? Let us therefore weep for ourselves while we have time, lest, at the hour of our departure, we be found asking God for extra time to repent.

A haughty person is not aware of his faults, or a humble person of his good qualities. An evil ignorance blinds the first, an ignorance pleasing to God blinds the second.

If someone is judged worthy to receive the gift of knowledge but allows his heart to be full of bitterness or rancor or aversion to another, it is as if he had been struck in the eye by a thornbush. That is why knowledge is no good without charity.

When a man has been sufficiently illumined, however, to perceive his own faults, he never ceases mourning for himself and for all men, seeing God’s great forbearance and what sins we in our wretchedness have committed and still persist in committing. As a result of this he becomes full of gratitude, not daring to condemn anyone, shamed by the profusion of God’s blessings and the multitude of our sins. Thereupon he joyfully renounces everything in his own will that is counter to God, and he watches over his own senses, so as to prevent them from doing anything beyond what is unavoidably needed.

Those who mourn and those who are insensitive are not subject to fear, but the cowardly often have become deranged. And this is natural. For the Lord rightly forsakes the proud that the rest of us may learn not to be puffed up.

I prefer a defeat accompanied by humility to a victory accompanied by pride.

If you have received from God the gift of knowledge, however limited, beware of neglecting charity and temperance. They are virtues which radically purify the soul from passions and so open the way of knowledge continually.

It is no small struggle to be freed from self-esteem. Such freedom is to be attained by the inner practice of the virtues and by more frequent prayer; and the sign that you have attained it is that you no longer harbor rancor against anybody who abuses or has abused you.

He who really keeps account of his actions considers as lost every day in which he does not mourn, whatever good he may have done in it.

How great the evil of pride is, that it deserves to have as its adversary not an angel or other virtues contrary to it but rather God Himself! For it must be noted that it is never said of those who are caught up in the other vices that the Lord resists them, or that the Lord is set against the gluttonous, or fornicators, or the angry, or the avaricious; this is true of the proud alone. For those vices only turn back upon wrongdoers or seem to be committed against those who have a part in them -- that is, against other human beings. This one, however, of its very nature touches God, and therefore it is specially worthy of having God opposed to it.

Nothing so abets our secret destruction as conceit and self-satisfaction, or so cuts us off from God and provokes our chastisement at the hands of other men as grumbling, or so disposes us to sin as a disorderly life and talkativeness.

As work according to God is called virtue, so unexpected affliction is called a test.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)