“Several factors besides skill are more significant in professional writers than in most amateurs. One is love of the surface level of language: the sound of it; the taste of it on the tongue; what it can be made to do in virtuosic passages that exist only for their own sake, like cadenzas in baroque concerti. Writers in love with their tools are not unlike surgeons obsessed with their scalpels, or Arctic sled racers who sleep among their dogs even when they don't have to.” WritingMadeLanguageSoundSleepLevelsDogTasteSkillsToolsSakeTongueSurfaceSignificantFactorsObsessedPassagesSurgeonsArcticBaroqueRacersScalpels Book:The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain Source: The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain
“The patient endurance of the saints exhausts the evil power that attacks them, since it makes them glory in sufferings undergone for the sake of the truth. It teaches those too much concerned with a life in the flesh to deepen themselves through such sufferings instead of pursuing ease and comfort; and it makes the flesh's natural weakness in the endurance of suffering a foundation for overwhelming spiritual power. For the natural weakness of the saints is precisely such a foundation, since the Lord has made their weakness stronger than the proud devil.” MadeChristianSpiritualSufferingEvilNaturalLordTeachToo MuchProudComfortGloryWeaknessDevilConcernedStrongerFoundationPatientSakeSaintFleshEaseEnduranceOrthodoxOverwhelmingOrthodox ChristianSpiritual Power Author:Maximus the Confessor
“By His gracious condescension God became man and is called man for the sake of man and by exchanging His condition for ours revealed the power that elevates man to God through his love for God and brings God down to man because of His love for man. By this blessed inversion, man is made God by divinization and God is made man by hominization. For the Word of God and God wills always and in all things to accomplish the mystery of His embodiment.” MenMadeChristianMysteryConditionsAll ThingsBlessedSakeAccomplishGods WillGod LoveOrthodoxWord Of GodHis LoveGraciousOrthodox ChristianEmbodimentExchangingCondescensionInversions Author:Maximus the Confessor
“Our Savior was crucified for our sakes that by His death He might give us life and train and attract us all to endurance. To Him I press on, and to the Father and to the Holy Spirit. I strive to be found true, judging myself unworthy of this world's goods; and yet not I because of the world, but the world because of me. Think of all these things in your heart; follow them with zeal; fight, as you have been commanded, for the truth to the death: For Christ was made 'obedient' even 'to death'” ThinkingWorldGivingHeartHas BeensMadeMightChristianSpiritFightingFoundFatherChristThis WorldJudgingHolyPressesTrainStriveSakeHoly SpiritEnduranceOrthodoxGoodsSaviorZealOrthodox ChristianUnworthyObedientJudging Myself Author:Saint Basil
“When you find an unwillingness to rise early in the morning, make this short speech to yourself: I am getting up now to do the business of a man; and am I out of humour for going about that I was made for, and for the sake of which I was sent into the world? Was I then designed for nothing but to doze and keep warm beneath the counterpane? Well! but this is a comfortable way of living.” MenWorldWayWellsMadeMorningHumourSpeechComfortableSakeWarm Book:The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Source: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius