Orthodox Christian Quotes - Page 2

• He who busies himself with the sins of others, or judges his brother on suspicion, has not yet even begun to repent or to examine himself so as to discover his own sins.

  Maximus the Confessor

  Christian, Brother, Judging

  11 Copy quote

• It is not he who begins well who is perfect. It is he who ends well who is approved in God's sight.

  Saint Basil

  Christian, Sight, Perfect

  79 Copy quote

• If through fear of God you cutoff your own will - inexplicably, for you do not know how this happens - God will give you His will. You will keep it indelibly in your heart, opening the eyes of your mind so that you recognize it; and you will be given the strength to fulfill it. The grace of the Holy Spirit operates these things: without it, nothing is accomplished.

  Symeon the New Theologian

  Christian, Heart, Eye

  14 Copy quote

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

  Isaac of Nineveh

  Christian, Men, Mourning

  23 Copy quote

• God belongs to all free beings. He is the life of all, the salvation of all ~faithful and unfaithful, just and unjust, pious and impious, passionate and dispassionate, monks and laymen, wise and simple, healthy and sick, young and old just as the effusion of light, the sight of the sun, and the changes of the seasons are for all alike; 'for there is no respect of persons with God.'

  John Climacus

  Wise, Christian, Simple

  8 Copy quote

• Illumination by the Spirit is the endless end of every virtue.

  Symeon the New Theologian

  Christian, Illumination, Spirit

  27 Copy quote

• If you offer fasting with humility and with mercy, your bones, as Isaiah said, shall be fat, and you shall be like a well-watered garden (cf. Isa. 58:11). So, then, your soul shall grow fat and its virtues also by the spiritual richness of fasting, and your fruits shall be multiplied by the fertility of your mind, so that there may be in you the inebriation of soberness, like that cup of which the Prophet says: 'Your cup which inebriates, how excellent it is' (Ps. 23:5 LXX)!

  Ambrose

  Christian, Spiritual, Humility

  8 Copy quote

• The title 'Righteousness' is given to God because He assigns what is appropriate to all things; he distributes their due proportion, beauty, rank, arrangement, their proper and fitting place and order.

  Pope Dionysius

  Christian, Order, Titles

  12 Copy quote

• Who should listen to discussions of theology? Those for whom it is a serious undertaking, not just another subject like any other for entertaining small-talk, after the races, the theater, songs, food, and sex: for there are people who count chatter on theology and clever deployment of arguments as one of their amusements.

  Gregory of Nazianzus

  Christian, Song, Sex

  9 Copy quote

• Leave all human injustices to the Lord, for God is the Judge, but as to yourself, be diligent in loving everybody with a pure heart.

  John of Kronstadt

  Christian, Heart, Judging

  29 Copy quote

• Both learned and unlearned young men seldom go to church, and in general do not attend to their spiritual education, looking upon it as unnecessary and giving themselves up to worldly vanity. Attention must be paid to this. It is the fruit of pride... They consider attendance at church and Divine service as the business of the common people and women, forgetting that, in the temple, Angels officiate with trembling, together with men, and regard this as their highest bliss.

  John of Kronstadt

  Christian, Spiritual, Angel

  8 Copy quote

• God is present in the moment of choice, not in order to watch but in order to be chosen. Therefore, each person must choose. Terrible is the battle, in a person's innermost being, between God and the world. The crowning risk involved lies in the possession of choice.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Christian, Lying, Order

  14 Copy quote

• This is the great work of a man: always to take the blame for his own sins before God, and toexpect temptation to his last breath.

  Anthony the Great

  Christian, Men, Temptation

  52 Copy quote

• Those who seek the Lord should not look for Him outside themselves; on the contrary, they must seek Him within themselves through faith made manifest in action. For He is near you: 'The word is... in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith' (Rom. 10:8) - Christ being Himself the word that is sought.

  Maximus the Confessor

  Christian, Heart, Looks

  59 Copy quote

• Our Lord humbled without humiliation His lofty station which yet could not be humbled, and condescends to His servants, with a condescension ineffable and incomprehensible. God being perfect becomes perfect man, and brings to perfection the newest of all new things (cf. Eccles 1:10), the only new thing under the sun, through which the boundless might of God is manifested. For what greater thing is there than that God should become man?

  John of Damascus

  Christian, Men, Cfs

  17 Copy quote

• When you see your body wasted away through sickness, do not murmur against God, but say: 'The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord' (Job 1:21). You are accustomed to look upon your body as upon your own inalienable property, but that is quite wrong, because your body is God's edifice.

  John of Kronstadt

  Christian, Jobs, Blessed

  14 Copy quote

• Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.

  John the Baptist

  Repentance And Forgiveness, Heaven, Jesus Christ

  90 Copy quote

• One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian.

  Mortimer Adler

  Christian, Champion, President

  52 Copy quote

• The Logos came down out of love for us. Let us not keep Him down permanently, but let us go up with Him to the Father, leaving the earth and earthly things behind, lest He say to us what He said to the Jews because of their stubbornness: 'I go where you cannot come (Jn. 8:21).

  Maximus the Confessor

  Christian, Father, Leaving

  8 Copy quote

• ...unless the grace of God comes to the help of our frailty, to protect and defend it, no man can withstand the insidious onslaughts of the enemy nor can he damp down or hold in check the fevers which burn in our flesh with nature's fire.

  John Cassian

  Christian, Men, Fire

  11 Copy quote

• Actually, all gifts have been given for reasons of temporal use and need and they will surely pass away at the end of the present dispensation. Love, however, will never be cut off. It works in us and for us, and not simply in this life. For when the burden of physical need has been laid aside in the time to come it will endure, more effectively, more excellently, forever unfailing, clinging to God with more fire and zeal through all the length of incorruption.

  John Cassian

  Cutting, Fire, Forever

  17 Copy quote

• It is not our free will but 'it is the Lord who sets the captive free' (Ps. 145:7). It is not our own virtue but 'it is the Lord who lifts up those who were laid low' (Ps. 145:8). It is not application to reading but 'it is the Lord who gives light to the blind' (Ps. 145:8). It is not our cautiousness but 'it is the Lord who protects the stranger' (Ps. 145:9). It is not our endurance but 'it is the Lord who raises or gives support to the fallen' (Ps. 144:14).

  John Cassian

  Christian, Reading, Light

  John Cassian, Colm Luibhéid (1985). “Conferences”, p.95, Paulist Press

  31 Copy quote

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• ...if you wish to get pure air into your room, or if you go for a walk in the fresh air, think of the pure and of the unclean heart. Many of us like to have pure air in the room (and this is an excellent habit), or are fond of walking in the fresh air, but they do not even think of the necessity of the purity of the spirit or heart (of, so to say, spiritual air, the breath of life); and, living in the fresh air, they allow themselves to indulge in impure thoughts, impure movements of the heart, and even impurity of language, and most impure carnal actions.

  John of Kronstadt

  Christian, Spiritual, Heart

  7 Copy quote

• In spite of our sinfulness, in spite of the darkness surrounding our souls, the Grace of the Holy Spirit, conferred by baptism in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, still shines in our hearts with the inextinguishable light of Christ ... and when the sinner turns to the way of repentance the light smooths away every trace of the sins committed, clothing the former sinner in the garments of incorruption, spun of the Grace of the Holy Spirit. It is this acquisition of the Holy Spirit about which I have been speaking.

  Seraphim of Sarov

  Christian, Father, Heart

  29 Copy quote

• All my theology is reduced to this narrow compass - "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners."

  Archibald Alexander

  Jesus, Orthodox Church, World

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 580, 1895.

  16 Copy quote

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