Quotes.....

Found these quotes, and thought they were really powerful (even if you don't fully agree with them). I love quotes that make me think...

The drunkard, the fornicator, the proud - he will receive God's mercy.
But he who does not want to forgive, to excuse, to justify consciously, intentionally... ...that person closes himself to eternal life before God, and even more so in the present life. He is turned away and not heard.
-Elder Sampson of Russia

The "world" is the general name for all the passions. When we wish to call the passions by a common name, we call them the world. But when we want to distinquish them by their special names, we call them passions. The passions are the following: love of riches, desire for posessions, bodily pleasure, from which comes with sexual passions, love of honour, which gives rise to envy, lust for power, arrogance and pride of position, the craving to adorn oneself with luxurious clothes and vain ornaments, the itch for human glory which is a source of rancor and resentment, and physical fear. Where these passions cease to exist there the world is dead...Someone has said of the Saints that while alive, they were dead; for though living in the flesh, they did not live for the flesh. See for which of these passions you are alive. Then you will know how far you are alive to the world, and how far you are dead to it.
-St. Iaasc the Syrian