Quotes about Truth

"The proud man thinks he can comprehend everything with his mind. The Lord does not grant this ... The Lord does not manifest Himself to the proud soul. Pride is difficult to detect in oneself, but the Lord leaves the proud to be tormented by their impotence until they humble themselves." -- St. Silouan of Mount Athos

"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

Just as we care for our bodies with good food and rest, so we must also care for our spiritual selves, that part of us that is connected to God. If we are spiritually ill, our bodies and minds also become sick. This is why regular prayer and times of silent contemplation are necessary parts of our daily lives. Periodically, we must also take extra measures of self-examination and learning, that we might be ever-perfected in the grace of the infinite and perfect God.

Search your hearts and minds for the spiritual wounds of unforgiveness and fear, which are atheistic and unchristian, and repent of them so that you might be healed by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Your Father in Christ,
Bishop JOSEPHhttp://www.antiochianladiocese.org/

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
by Saint Philo of Alexandria

The forbidden truth is that we are living by a set of lies which are necessary for short-term profit, at the expense of human physical and psychological life and global environmental integrity. We are living in a system where power ensures that the requirements of profit take priority over the requirements of living things-including the need to know that this is the case. Consequently our freedom extends as far as, and no further than, the satisfaction of these requirements, with all else being declared neurosis, paranoia, communism, extremism, the work of the devil, or Neptunian nonsense.

Where people stop believing the truth, they do not start to believe in nothing, they start to believe in anything.

Art is nothing but the expression of our dream; the more we surrender to it the closer we get to the inner truth of things, our dream-life, the true life that scorns questions and does not see them.

Ecologically considered, it is not primarily our verbal statements that are “true” or “false,” but rather the kind of relations that we sustain with the rest of nature. A human community that lives in a mutually beneficial relation with the surrounding earth is a community, we might say, that lives in truth. The ways of speaking common to that community – the claims and beliefs that enable such reciprocity to perpetuate itself – are, in this important sense, true. They are in accord with a right relation between these people and their world. Statements and beliefs, meanwhile, that foster violence toward the land, ways of speaking that enable the impairment or ruination of the surrounding field of beings, can be described as false ways of speaking – ways that encourage an unsustainable relation with the encompassing earth. A civilization that relentlessly destroys the living land it inhabits is not well acquainted with truth, regardless of how many supposed facts it has amassed regarding the calculable properties of its world.

Beware of despair.  You do not serve a tyrant, but your service is to a kind Lord, Who, taking nothing from you, He has given you all.  And when you did not exist at all, He fashioned you so that you would be in that [ state ] in which you now are.  Who is sufficient to render Him thanks for the fact that He has brought us into existence?  O the immeasurable grace!  Who can sufficiently honor Him with hymns?  For He has given us knowledge of all things.  And not only those which are manifest, but also of the hidden things.  For we know that if there is anything we do not know, it is necessary for us only to ask this [ knowledge ] from Him.

Written truth is four-dimensional. If we consult it at the wrong time, or read it at the wrong place, it is as empty and shapeless as a dress on a hook.

Truth is rhythmical: if it implies stasis, it is platitude. Truth is syncopated: if it supplies all the terms, there is one term too many. Truth is barbed: if it comforts, it lies. Truth is an armed dancer.

Neither God nor Being nor any other word can define or explain the ineffable reality behind the word, so the only important question is whether the word is a help or a hindrance in enabling you to experience That toward which it points.

I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that deep within you don't know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten.

The world is nothing but my perception of it. I see only through myself. I hear only through the filter of my story.

You don't get to vote on what is. Have you noticed?

The teacher you need is the person you're living with.

Anything you want to ask a teacher, ask yourself, and wait for the answer in silence.

I'm a lover of reality. When I argue with What Is, I lose, but only 100% of the time.

The Truth is the only thing you'll ever run into that has no agenda.

The truth is that you already are what you are seeking.

True intelligence does not derive from thought.  True intelligence uses thought.

Nobody can give us what we really already are. Wouldn’t it be terrible if somebody could give you what you really are? …’cause if they could give it to you, they could take it away.

What am I, really? The beautiful thing…is nobody can tell us what we are. Nobody can really tell us. Not in a way that’s going to be satisfactory to us. Our true nature is self-authenticating. When we bump into our true nature, it authenticates itself. Something inside us knows. This…is what has been sought for, longed for, looked for. This is it. Usually, it’s not what we expected…

Our yearning for truth actually comes from truth.

True meditation is letting go of manipulating our experience.

You must want to know the truth more than you want to feel secure in order to fully awaken to the fact that you are nothing but Awakeness itself.

+Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God have mercy on me the sinner+

Therefore, be ye lamps unto yourselves, be a refuge to yourselves. Hold fast to Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone beside yourselves. And those, who shall be a lamp unto themselves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but holding fast to the Truth as their lamp, and holding fast to the Truth as their refuge, they shall reach the topmost height.

"Rebbe," a woman asked during an ecumenical panel discussion, "Aren't all religions equally true?" "No," said Reb Yerachmiel, "all religions are equally false."

The relationship of religion to Truth is like that of a menu to a meal. The menu describes the meal as best it can. It points to something beyond itself. As long we use the menu as a guide we do it honor. When we mistake the menu for the meal, we do it and ourselves a grave injustice.

Responsibility to self simply means to acknowledge inner truth—our imperfections and our power, our beauty.