Sorrow Quotes - page 37
You who approach your brother, you who are a husband or a wife, when you approach your wife or husband, you who are a father or a mother, when you approach your child, whatever you say, whatever you are thinking to say, say it after you first say a few words that will make him happy, will give him some consolation, a breath of fresh air. Make him say ‘I feel better, I feel happier!' Approach people in a way that makes them feel proud of you, love you, feel ecstatic when they see you. Because all people in their lives, in their homes, in their bodies, in their souls, have pain, sicknesses, difficulties, hardships; and each of them hide their pain inside their secret ‘basket', inside their heart, inside their home, so that others are not aware of it. So, I don't know your pain and you don't know my pain. I may be laughing and shout, in order to cover my sorrow. For this reason, give a smile to the other person first.
Aimilianos of Simonopetra
Prayer by its nature is communion and union of man with God; by its action it is the reconciliation of man with God, the mother and daughter of tears, a bridge for crossing temptations, a wall of protection from afflictions, a crushing of conflicts, boundless activity, the spring of virtues, the source of spiritual gifts, invisible progress, food of the soul, the enlightening of the mind, an axe for despair, a demonstration of hope, release from sorrow, the wealth of monks.
Ignatius Bryanchaninov
So I approach the date on which my story of the Fifty Years Revolution begins. The old world ended, with its strange mixture of beauty and ugliness, happiness and sorrow, good and evil-so much to be proud of; so much, looking back, of which perhaps to be ashamed. Yet the most rabid radical or the most caustic critic of the Britain that had fought and won a twenty-year battle for freedom a century before, that for a hundred years had helped to keep the peace of the world, and spread civilisation to its distant corners, cannot but feel that if, in this sequence of rapid change, much has been gained, something, too, has been lost.
Harold Macmillan
How can it be that one who hath nothing, neither raiment, nor house, nor home, nor bodily tendance, nor servant, nor city, should live tranquil and contented? Behold God hath sent you a man to show you in act and deed that it may be so. Behold me! I have neither city nor house nor possessions nor servants: the ground is my couch; I have no wife, no children, no shelter-nothing but earth and sky, and one poor cloak. And what lack I yet? am I not untouched by sorrow, by fear? am I not free? ...when have I laid anything to the charge of God or Man? when have I accused any? hath any of you seen me with a sorrowful countenance? And in what wise treat I those to whom you stand in fear and awe? Is it not as slaves? Who when he seeth me doth not think that he beholdeth his Master and his King? (114).
Epictetus