Quotes by St. Theophan the Recluse

Examine yourself to see whether you have within you a strong sense of your own self importance, or negatively, whether you have failed to realize that you are nothing.  This feeling of self-importance is deeply hidden, but it controls the whole of our life.  Its first demand is that everything should be as we wish it, and as soon as this is not so we complain to God and are annoyed with people.

Saint Theophan the Recluse

"In general, Loquacity (rambling talk) opens the doors of the soul, and the devout warmth of the heart at once escapes.  Empty talk does the same, but even more so... Empty talk is the door to criticism and slander, the spreader of false rumors and opinions, the sower of discord and strife.  It stifles the taste for mental work and almost always serves as a cover for absence of sound knowledge..."

Saint Theophan the Recluse