Tuesday, October 27, 2009

The Madness of the World


"Is it true, my friends, that there are many more insane persons in our day than ever before? Why? Because of the very powerful effect of the passions, it seems to me... A soul too sensitive to the pleasures of passions also feels sharply the pain they cause. In such a soul paradise and hell are neighbors. Ecstasy is followed by either despair or melancholy, each of which so often opens the door... to the madhouse."

Nikolay Karamzin, “The Letters of a Russian Traveler”

"But isn’t the exalted state of a poet, or an inventor, closer to what is called insanity than insanity is to an ordinary animal-like stupidity? Isn’t what we call common sense a highly elastic term, a term used by an ordinary person against a great man who is incomprehensible to him, and also by a man of genius to cover up his reasonings and not to frighten an ordinary person with them?"

Prince Vladimir Odoevsky, “Russian Nights”

"A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying: ‘You are mad, you are not like us.’"

St. Anthony the Great

"There is a way which seems right to man, but its end is the way of death."

King Solomon, Proverbs 14:12

"In each of us, two natures are at war – the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them, and one of them must conquer. But in our own hands lies the power to choose – what we want most to be we are."

Robert Louis Stevenson, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

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"I teach them all the good I can, and recommend them to others from whom I think they will get some moral benefit. And the treasures that the wise men of old have left us in their writings I open and explore with my friends. If we come on any good thing, we extract it, and we set much store on being useful to one another." - Socrates
"In imitation of the method of the bee, I shall make my composition from those things which are conformable with the truth and from our enemies themselves gather the fruit of salvation. But I shall reject all that is worthless and falsely labeled as knowledge." - St. John the Damascene

All Saints Celebrated In January

Sisoes, the great ascetic, before the tomb of Alexander, King of the Greeks, who was once covered in glory. Astonished, he mourns for the vicissitudes of time and the transience of glory, and tearfully declaims thus: "The mere sight of you, tomb, dismays me and causes my heart to shed tears, as I contemplate the debt we, all men, owe. How can I possibly stand it? Oh, death! Who can evade you?"

"Ascend, ascend, brethren, ascend with eagerness and resolve in your hearts, listening to him who says: ‘Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of our God, Who maketh our feet like those of the deer, and setteth us on high places, that we may be victorious with His song.’" - St. John Climacos

"May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." - Galatians 6:14

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." - Matthew 18:3