Favorite Quotes
Bible Passages for Each Day of the Week
Other Quotes
"Will we not be struck with amazement at our Savior’s mighty power and love for mankind, who patiently endured to suffer our infirmities with us, and was able to come down to our weaknesses?" —Saint Basil the Great"God and man are paradigms of each other, that as much as God is humanised to man through love for mankind, so much is man able to be deified to God through love." —St. Maximos Confessor
"Man's Maker was made man that he, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at his mother's breasts; that the Bread might be hungry, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired from the journey; that the Truth might be accused by false witnesses, the Judge of the living and the dead be judged by a mortal, Justice be sentenced by the unjust, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Vine crowned with thorns, the Foundation suspended on wood; that Strength might be made weak, that the Physician might be wounded, that Life might die. He was made to suffer these and similar undeserved things for us, that he might free us who were undeserving; and he who on account of us endured such great evils merited no evil, while we who through him were so bountifully blessed had no merits to show for such blessings. Therefore, because of all this, he who before all ages and without a beginning determined by days was the Son of God saw fit, in these latter days, to be the Son of Man; and he, who was born of the Father but not made by the Father, was made in the mother whom he had made, that he might sometime be born here on earth of her who could never have been anywhere except through him." —Saint Augustine
"Prepare, O Bethlehem, for Eden has been opened to all; adorn yourself, O Ephratha, for the Tree of Life blossoms forth from the virgin in the cave. Her womb is a spiritual Paradise planted with divine Fruit. If we eat of It we shall live forever and not die like Adam. Christ comes to restore the image which He made in the beginning!" —Troparion in the Fourth Tone for the Prefeast of the Nativity
"God created man in order to have someone on whom to shower His love.... The glory of God is a human being who is fully alive, and the life of such a person consists in beholding God.... Christ, by reason of His measureless love, became what we are, in order that He might make us what He Himself is." —Saint Irenaios of Lyons
"The most mysterious of all mysteries: That God himself really became man by charity, assuming flesh endowed with intellectual soul, and welcoming into himself without change the passions of human nature so as to save man and to give himself to us as the imprint of virtue, and having the image of charity and benevolence towards him and our neighbor, to mobilize all our powers so that we might correspond as we ought with our salvation." —Saint Maximos Confessor
"The Son of God has become Son of Man in order to make us... sons of God, raising our race by grace to what He is Himself by nature, granting us birth from above through the grace of the Holy Spirit and leading us straightway to the Kingdom of Heaven, or rather, granting us this Kingdom within us, in order that we should not merely be fed by the hope of entering it, but entering into full possession thereof should cry: our 'life is hid with Christ in God.'" —Saint Simeon the New Theologian
"The divine Word of God the Father became Son of man and Man so that He might make men gods and the sons of God." —Saint Maximos Confessor
"The heart itself is only a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and lions, there are poisonous beasts, and all the treasures of evil, there are rough and uneven roads, there are precipices; but there too is God and the angels, life is there, and the Kingdom, there too is light, and there the apostles, and heavenly cities, and treasures of grace. All things lie within that little space." —Saint Makarios the Great
"The fact that God became a human being is a firm confirmation of our hope that human nature will be divinized. Humanity will be made godly just as God himself became a man. He who became man without any sin will deify human nature, yet without changing it into divine nature, and he will personally exalt it as high as he once was brought low for humanity’s sake. This is the mystical teaching of the great apostle Paul." —Saint Maximos Confessor
"Let us make our body an altar of sacrifice. Let us place all our desires on it and beseech the Lord that he would send down from heaven that invisible and mighty fire to consume the altar and everything that is on it." —Saint Makarios the Great
"The inward stirring and touching of God makes us hungry and yearning; for the Spirit of God hunts our spirit; and the more he touches us, the greater our hunger and craving." —Blessed John van Ruysbroeck
"In the passion and death of Christ, our sins have been devoured by fire. If we accept that by faith, and if we accept the whole Christ in faithful self-giving, that is to say by choosing and walking in the way of the imitation of Christ, then he will lead us 'through the passion and cross to the glory of the resurrection.' It is exactly this that is experienced in contemplation: the passing through the atoning fire to the blissful union of love." —Saint Edith Stein
"O inexpressible mystery and unheard of paradox: the Invisible is seen, the Intangible is touched, the eternal Word becomes accessible to our speech, the Timeless steps into time, the Son of God becomes the Son of Man!" —Saint Gregory of Nyssa
"The true goal consists in our acquiring the Holy Spirit of God.... Acquire the Spirit of Peace and thousands around you will be saved." —Saint Seraphim of Sarov
"Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been said, is why Christ the Redeemer 'fully reveals man to himself.' ...The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly—and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and even illusory standards and measures of his being—he must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter into him with all his own self, he must appropriate and assimilate the whole of the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption in order to find himself." —Pope John Paul II
"What is purity? It is a heart full of compassion for the whole of created nature... And what is a compassionate heart? ...It is a heart which burns for all creation, for the birds, for the beasts, for the devils, for every creature. When he thinks about them, when he looks at them, his eyes fill with tears. So strong, so violent is his compassion... that his heart breaks when he sees pain and suffering of the humblest creature. That is why he prays with tears at every moment… for all the enemies of truth and for all who cause him harm, that they may be protected and forgiven. He prays even for serpents in the boundless compassion that wells up in his heart after God’s likeness." —Saint Isaac of Syria
"Prefer nothing whatever to Christ." —Saint Benedict of Norcia
"If, then, you are looking for the way by which you should go, take Christ, because He himself is the Way." —Saint Thomas Aquinas
"Here learn the science of the Saints: All is to be found in the passion of Jesus. Make every effort to remain hidden in the wounds of Jesus, and you will be enriched with every good and every true light, enabling you to fly to that Perfection which is consonant with your way of life." —Saint Paul of the Cross
"He who desires anything but God deceives himself, and he who loves anything but God errs miserably." —Saint Philip Neri
"We are not able to call 'human' just the soul or just the body, but rather, both together, of which it was said that it was created by God in his own image." —Saint Gregory Palamas
"When we speak about wisdom, we are speaking of Christ. When we speak about virtue, we are speaking of Christ. When we speak about justice, we are speaking of Christ. When we speak about peace, we are speaking of Christ. When we speak about truth and life and redemption, we are speaking of Christ." —Saint Ambrose of Milan
"Whoever does not seek the cross of Christ doesn’t seek the glory of Christ." —Saint John of the Cross
"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart." —Dorothy Day
"All we do, our prayers, our work, our suffering, is for Jesus. Our life has no other reason or motivation." —Blessed Teresa of Calcutta
"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried." —G.K. Chesterton
"I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness, is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for others. God help us to be men!" —Cesar Chavez
"The law was given so grace we would seek. Grace was given that the law we might keep." —Saint Augustine
"Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.... Try to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly. The more you succeed in loving, the more you'll be convinced at the existence of God and the immortality of your soul. And if you reach complete selflessness in the love of your neighbor, then undoubtedly you will believe, and no doubt will even be able to enter your soul. This has been tested. It is certain." —Fyodor Dostoevsky
"Our Lord was pleased to assume the likeness of every poor man and compared Himself to every poor man in order that no man who believes in Him should exalt himself over his brother, but, seeing his Lord in his brother, should consider himself less and worse than his brother, just as he is less than his Creator; and should take the poor man in and honor him, and be ready to exhaust all his means in helping him, just as our Lord Jesus Christ exhausted His blood for our salvation." —Archimandrite Sophrony
"Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament.... There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man’s heart desires." —J.R.R. Tolkien
"We firmly believe that the Church will never fall, will never waiver and will not be destroyed. For this is what Christ taught, by whom the heavens were established and the earth was founded, and stands firmly as the Holy Spirit says." —Saint John of Damascus
"Do not leave the Church, for there is nothing mightier than she [the Body of Christ]; she will never grow old and will always bloom; thus the Scriptures, showing her durability and stability, calls her a mountain." —Saint John Chrysostom
"The Cross is the way to Paradise, but only when it is borne willingly." —Saint Paul of the Cross
"Abba Joseph went to see Abba Lot and said to him: 'Father, according to my strength I keep a moderate rule of prayer and fasting, live in peaceful quiet and meditation, and as far as I can I purify my imagination. What more must I do?' And the old man rose and held his hands toward the heaven. His fingers became like ten flames of fire and he said: 'If you will, you shall become all flame.'" —Sayings of the Desert Fathers
"The brothers asked Abba Agathon: 'Among all our different activities, Father, which is the virtue that requires the greatest effort?' He answered: 'Forgive me, but I think there is no labor greater than praying to God. For every time a man wants to pray, his enemies, the demons, try to prevent him; for they know that nothing obstructs them so much as prayer to God. In everything else that a man undertakes, if he perseveres, he will attain rest. But in order to pray, a man must struggle to his last breath.'" —Sayings of the Desert Fathers
"Someone told me of an extraordinarily high degree of purity. He said a certain man, on seeing a beautiful woman, thereupon glorified the Creator; and from that one look, he was moved to the love of God and to a fountain of tears.... If such person always feels and behaves in the same way on similar occasions, then he has risen immortal before the general resurrection." —Saint John Climacus
"We were created for eternal life by our Creator, we are called to it by the word of God, and we are renewed for it by holy Baptism. And Christ the Son of God came into the world for this, that He should call us and take us there, and He is the one thing needful. For this reason your very first endeavor and care should be to receive it. Without it everything is as nothing, though you have the whole world under you." —Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk
"The further the soul advances, the greater are the adversaries against which it must contend. Blessed are you, if the struggle grows fierce against you at the time of prayer. Do not allow your eyes to sleep or your eyelids to slumber until the hour of your death, but labor without ceasing that you may enjoy life without end." —Evagrius of Pontus
"Let us not, who would be Christians, expect anything else from [the world] than to be crucified. For to be Christian is to be crucified, in this time and in any time since Christ came for the first time. His life is the example—and warning—to us all. We must be crucified personally, mystically; for through crucifixion is the only path to resurrection. If we would rise with Chrit, we must first be humbled with Him—even to the ultimate humiliation, being devoured and spit forth by the uncomprehending world. And we must be crucified outwardly, in the eyes of the world; for Christ's Kingdom is not of this world, and the world cannot bear it, even a single representative of it, even for a single moment. The world can only accept Antichrist, now or at any time. No wonder, then, that it is hard to be a Christian—it is not hard, it is impossible. No one can knowingly accept a way of life which, the more truly it is lived, leads the more surely to one's own destruction. And that is why we constantly rebel, try to make life easier, try to be half-Christian, try to make the best of both worlds. We must ultimately choose—our felicity lies in one world or the other, not in both. God give us the strength to pursue the path to crucifixion; there is no other way to be a Christian." —Seraphim Rose
"Speech is the organ of this present world. Silence is a mystery of the world to come." —Saint Isaac of Syria