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Life’s parts sometimes have little in common, so little that it might appear various people lived them. When this happens, it is difficult not to feel surprised that all these people carry the same name.
Unhurried, the words turned into sounds and dissolved into the expanse, after shedding the shells of their meaning.
The mind is the soul’s eyes.
Our body, O Arseny, is like quicksilver that lies broken into tiny beads on the earth but does not mix with the earth. It lies there by its lonesome until some skilled craftsman comes and collects it all, putting it back into a vessel. And that is how the Almighty will collect our decomposed bodies again for the universal resurrection.
At times it is not crucial how a word is spoken and by whom. All that is important is that it has been spoken. Or, at the very least, thought.
For Christofer, the written word seemed to regulate the world. Stop its fluctuations. Prevent notions from eroding. This is why Christofer’s sphere of interest was so broad. According to the writer’s thinking, that sphere should correspond to the world’s breadth.
during the Middle Ages people read predominantly out loud, at the very least simply moving their lips.
And even the old men only vaguely remember him because they remember indifferently, without love. But the Lord remembers with love and does not let any small detail slip his memory, thus He does not need his name.
Death gave off the smell of an unwashed body and the inhuman gravity that causes horror to arise in the soul.
everyone remains alone with God at the final moment.
He asked that they be conveyed directly into his ear, and he then entombed them in that ear for the ages.
Nikandr’s temporary necrosis was a display of solidarity. In order to support Christofer, he had decided to take the first steps into death with him. Because the first steps are the most difficult.
Socrates saw his friend, who was rushing to artists to order his image be carved upon rock, and he said to him, you are rushing for a stone to become like yourself, why not take care that you do not become like a stone;
A week hath seven dayes and serves as a prototype for human lyfe: the first day is a childe’s birth, the second day is for a yonge man, on the third day he is a growne man, the fourth day is for the middle of the lyfe, fifth is the day of graying, the sixth day is for old age, and the seventh day is for the ende.
the elder’s resolute spirit was in irreconcilable contradiction with the decrepitude of his body.
So much of me is brutish, thought Arseny. So much.
Angels do not tire, said the Angel, because they do not scrimp on their strength. If you are not thinking about the finiteness of your strength, you will not tire, either. Know, O Arseny, that only he who does not fear drowning is capable of walking on water.
In those days nobody really cried, for tears cannot soften the grief of so much death. Beyond that, there were simply no more tears.
Arseny knew that he was dreaming but he knew that he was dreaming the way things truly were.
asking himself about the place of all these listed phenomena in the overall scheme of things. After all, their existence could not, could it (he asked himself), be an irrationality in a world that is constructed rationally?
Vasily the Great sayde: virtue that is in old age is not virtue, but infirmitie in acting on luste of the flesh.
When a certain bald man insulted Diogenes, Diogenes said: I will not render insult for insult but I will praise the hairs of your head because they ran off after seeing its madness.
However much sympathy one might have for another’s body, its pain cannot be perceived as one’s own.
I had simply grown unaccustomed to beauty in my life,
And I am glad to accentuate its grandeur with my wretchedness, since in doing so it is almost as if I am a party to its creation.
He would stop and then fix a special gaze on them: it was the gaze of someone whose state of mind differs from what is generally accepted.
As he parted with Anfim’s soul, Arseny whispered: Listen, I want to ask you a favor. If you meet a little boy there, he is even smaller than you… You will recognize him easily, he does not even have a name. He is my son. You tell… Arseny pressed his forehead to an oak and felt its woodenness pour into him. You give him a kiss for me. Just give him a kiss.
If you give your flesh a finger, it will grab an entire hand.
During the dayes, God’s servant Ustin laughs at the worlde, at nyghte he mourns the same worlde.
a miracle can be the result of effort multiplied by faith.
confirmation of the nonrandomness of everything that took place on earth.
Perhaps on the boundary of the world, replied Ambrogio, I will learn something about the boundary of time.
historians in the Middle Ages were unlike historians these days. They always looked for moral reasons as an explanation for historical events. It’s like they didn’t notice the direct connection between events. Or didn’t attach much significance to it.
time connected all events, even though people didn’t consider that connection reliable.
Your trouble, if you will, is that reaching final conclusions just isn’t your thing. You’re afraid the decision you make will deprive you of further choice, so that paralyzes your will.
a malice as heavy as lead simply filled the gap inside me, between the kindness expected and the kindness possessed.
In the most general sense, journeys confirmed to the world the continuity of the expanse, a concept that continued to evoke certain doubts.
He who holds the world within answers for everything.
All history is, to a certain extent, a scroll in the Almighty’s hands.
People are free, Ambrogio replied, but history is not free. As you say, there are so many intentions and actions that history cannot bring them all together, and only God can holde them all. I would even say that it is not people that are free but the individual person. I liken the confluence of human wills to fleas in a container: their movement is obvious but do they really have a common purpose? That is why history has no goal, just as humanity has none. Only an individual person has a goal. And even then, not always.
A city of saints, whispered Ambrogio, following the play of the shadow. They present us the illusion of life. No, objected Arseny, also in a whisper. They disprove the illusion of death.
They were angry people, as befits guardians.
I think time is given to us by the grace of God so we will not get mixed up, because a person’s consciousness cannot take in all events at once. We are locked up in time because of our weakness.
Time is more likely a curse, for it did not exist in Heaven, O Arseny. The forefathers lived that long because a heavenly timelessness still glowed on their faces. It was as if they had grown used to time, see? They had a little eternity in themselves, too.
The words sooner and later do not determine the content of occurrences. They relate only to the form in which they flow: time.
think, said Ambrogio, that it is not time that runs out, but the occurrence. An occurrence expresses itself and ceases its own existence. The poet dies at, say, thirty-seven years old, and when people lament over him, they begin debating about what he might yet have written. But perhaps he had already accomplished what he had to and expressed all of himself.
Life consists of partings, said Arseny. But you can rejoice more fully in companionship when you remember that.
Our God is closer and warmer, theirs is higher and grander.
Moving around within an expanse enriches our experience, the brother modestly said. It compacts time, said Ambrogio, and makes it more spacious.
