Mary Ann > Mary's Quotes

“To sing a wrong note is insignificant, but to sing without passion is unforgivable.”
― Ludwig van Beethoven

“In the Christian context, we do not mean by a "mystery" merely that which is baffling and mysterious, an enigma or insoluble problem. A mystery is, on the contrary, something that is revealed for our understanding, but which we never understand exhaustively because it leads into the depth or the darkness of God. The eyes are closed—but they are also opened.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“Love and hatred are not merely subjective feelings, affecting the inward universe of those who experience them, but they are also objective forces, altering the world outside ourselves...if this is true of my love, it is true to an incomparably greater extent of Christ's love. The victory of his suffering love upon the Cross does not merely set me an example, showing me what I myself may achieve if by my own efforts I imitate him. Much more than this, his suffering love has a creative effect upon me, transforming my own heart and will, releasing me from bondage, making me whole, rendering it possible for me to love in a way that would lie altogether beyond my powers, had I not first been loved by him.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“If I do not feel a sense of joy in God's creation, if I forget to offer the world back to God with thankfulness, I have advanced very little upon the Way. I have not yet learnt to be truly human. For it is only through thanksgiving that I can become myself.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“We see that it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“Tradition is not only a protective, conservative principle; it is, primarily, the principle of growth and regeneration… Tradition is the constant abiding of the Spirit and not only the memory of words.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity

“Faith is not the supposition that something might be true, but the assurance that someone is there.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“it should be quotations”
― Timothy Ware

“Jesus condemned no one except hypocrites.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Power of the Name: The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality

“The culture and educational system of the contemporary West are based almost exclusively upon the training of the reasoning brain and, to a lesser degree, of the aesthetic emotions. Most of us have forgotten that we are not only brain and will, senses and feelings; we are also spirit. Modern man has for the most part lost touch with the truest and highest aspect of himself; and the result of this inward alienation can be seen all too plainly in his restlessness, his lack of identity and his loss of hope.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“Such, then, is our God: unknowable in his essence, yet known in his energies; beyond and above all that we can think or express, yet closer to us than our own heart.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“Our reasoning brain is weak, and our tongue is weaker still”, remarks St Basil the Great. “It is easier to measure the entire sea with a tiny cup than to grasp God's ineffable greatness with the human mind.”10”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“We do not have any genuine knowledge of those whom we hate.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“In our spiritual vision we are not only to see each thing in sharp relief, standing out in all the brilliance of its specific being, but we are also to see each thing as transparent: in and through each created thing we are to discern the Creator.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“Pain and evil confront us as a surd. Suffering, our own and that of others, is an experience through which we have to live, not a theoretical problem that we can explain away. If there is an explanation, it is on a level deeper than words. Suffering cannot be “justified”; but it can be used, accepted—and, through this acceptance, transfigured. “The paradox of suffering and evil”, says Nicolas Berdyaev, “is resolved in the experience of compassion and love.”31”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“The contemplation of nature has two correlative aspects. First, it means appreciating the “thusness” or “thisness” of particular things, persons and moments. We are to see each stone, each leaf, each blade of grass, each frog, each human face, for what it truly is, in all the distinctness and intensity of its specific being. As the prophet Zechariah warns us, we are not to “despise the day of small things” (4:10). “True mysticism”, says Olivier Clément, “is to discover the extraordinary in the ordinary.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“Christianity is more than a theory about the universe, more than teachings written down on paper; it is a path along which we journey—in the deepest and richest sense, the way of life.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“there is no greater force within creation than the free will of beings endowed with self-consciousness and spiritual intellect; and so the misuse of this free will can have altogether terrifying consequences.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“All created things are marked with the seal of the Trinity.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“Joyful thanksgiving, so far from being escapist or sentimental, is on the contrary entirely realistic—but with the realism of one who sees the world in God, as the divine creation.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“If there is a “problem of evil”, there is also a “problem of good.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

“To know a person is far more than to know facts about that person. To know a person is essentially to love him or her; there can be no true awareness of other persons without mutual love. We do not have any genuine knowledge of those whom we hate.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way