Quotes

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

Pleasure

We truly love God and keep His commandments if we restrain ourselves from our pleasures. For he who still abandons himself to unlawful desires certainly does not love God, since he contradicts Him in his own intentions. . . Therefore, he loves God truly, whose mind is not conquered by consent to evil delight. For the more one takes pleasure in lower things, the more he is separated from heavenly love.

St. Gregory the Great

Solitude

Solitude offers us an excellent opportunity for calming our passions and giving our reason time to remove them thoroughly from our soul. For just as wild animals can be soothed by being stroked, so all our anger, fear and stress, which poison and disrupt our soul, can be soothed by an atmosphere of peace where the freedom from constant disturbance ensures that our soul can be brought more easily under the power of reason.

St. Basil the Great

Solitude

The arrows of the enemy cannot touch one who loves quietness; but he who moves about in a crowd will often be wounded.

St. Nilus of Sinai

Pleasure

You must set about rooting out the very desire to have things pleasant, to get on well, to be contented. You must learn to like sadness, poverty, pain, hardship. You must learn to follow privately the Lord's bidding: not to speak empty words, not to adorn yourself, always to obey authority, not to look at a woman with desire, not to be angry and much else. For all these biddings are given us not in order for us to act as if they did not exist, but for us to follow: otherwise the Lord of mercy would not have burdened us with them. If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, He said (Matthew 16:24), thereby leaving it to each person's own will-if any man will-and to each person's endeavor: let him deny himself.

Tito Colliander

Pleasure

Let us not wallow in pleasures, that we might behold His glory in the day of His coming.

St. Ephraim the Syrian

Solitude

Nothing is better for rendering the heart penitent and the soul humble than wise solitude and complete silence.

St. Gregory of Sinai

Solitude

Nothing so fills the heart with contrition and humbles the soul as solitude embraced with self-awareness, and utter silence.

St. Gregory of Sinai

Solitude

A fish swiftly escapes a hook and a sensual soul shuns solitude.

St. John Climacus

Solitude

Every man that loves God loves a quiet life.

St. Isaac the Syrian

Pleasure

Almost every sin is committed for the sake of sensual pleasure; and sensual pleasure is overcome by hardship and distress arising either voluntarily from repentance, or else involuntarily as a result of some salutary and providential reversal.

St. Maximus the Confessor

Pleasure

The soul's health consists in dispassion and spiritual knowledge; no slave to sensual pleasure can attain it.

St. Thalassios the Libyan

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The arrows of the enemy cannot touch one who loves quietness; but he who moves about in a crowd will often be wounded.

Let us not wallow in pleasures, that we might behold His glory in the day of His coming.

Nothing is better for rendering the heart penitent and the soul humble than wise solitude and complete silence.

Nothing so fills the heart with contrition and humbles the soul as solitude embraced with self-awareness, and utter silence.

A fish swiftly escapes a hook and a sensual soul shuns solitude.

Every man that loves God loves a quiet life.

Almost every sin is committed for the sake of sensual pleasure; and sensual pleasure is overcome by hardship and distress arising either voluntarily from repentance, or else involuntarily as a result of some salutary and providential reversal.

The soul's health consists in dispassion and spiritual knowledge; no slave to sensual pleasure can attain it.

"We must observe ourselves closely and miss no opportunity to assist our neighbor."

St. Ambrose of Optina

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