On The Human Condition Quotes

“But by his own hands, as an artist, he took earth. When you focus on what is taken, what is the human being? When you understand the One doing the molding, the human is great, indeed he is nothing because of the material and great through the honor.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“Evil consists in estrangement from God. With a small turning of the eye, we are either facing the sun or facing the shadow of our own body. Thus one who looks upward easily finds illumination, but for one who turns toward the shadow darkening is inevitable.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“But the things invented through devotion to art promote business, which is especially to be avoided as harmful to the human being.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“I discovered from this word both that the human is nothing and that the human is great. If you look toward our nature alone, it is nothing and is worthy of nothing, but if you look toward the honor with which he was honored, the human is great.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“For he who now deceives us, and who endeavors by contrivance through worldly enticements to produce in us forgetfulness of our benefactor, who rushes against us for the ruin of our souls and tramples upon us, will then, as a reproach, bring before the Lord our contempt and boast of our disobedience and apostasy. He in fact neither created us nor died for us, but all the same he had us as his followers in disobedience and neglect of the commandments of God.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“So do not ever allow your mind, reduced to utter slavery, to become a slave of the passions; moreover, do not yield to the passions struggling against reason and let them transfer to themselves the rule of the soul.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“Be attentive, then, to yourself, that you may also receive the aid of healing proportionate to your offense. If the sin is great and severe, you need many confessions, bitter tears, earnestness in vigils, continual fasting.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“Look down on the flesh, for it is passing away; take care of the soul, for it is something immortal.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“We human beings are easily led toward sins of the mind. Therefore he who has formed our hearts individually, knowing that the greatest part of sin is accomplished in impulse through what is in our intention, has prescribed purity in our directive faculty as primary for us.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“Has someone abused you? Bless him. Has he struck you? Endure it. Does he spit on you and regard you as nothing? Then accept this thought about yourself, that you were taken from the earth, and you will return to the earth again [Gen”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“For temper incites fighting, and fighting gives birth to abuse, and abuse to blows, and blows to wounds, and often wounds to death.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“God does not love what is constrained but what is accomplished out of virtue. And virtue comes into being out of free choice and not out of constraint.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“Therefore, having learned these things clearly from God, you can distinguish for yourself between the kinds of evil, and know which is real evil, namely sin, whose end is destruction, and what seems evil because it is painful to the senses but has a capacity for good, such as the distresses that bring about a cessation of sin, whose fruit is the eternal salvation of souls.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“you do not accuse the physicians of any wrong in his cuttings and burnings and complete mutilations of the body; but rather you probably pay him money and you call him a savior, since he has produced illness in a small part of the body to prevent the suffering from spreading throughout the whole of it.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“As, therefore, the physician is a benefactor even if he produces distress or pain in the body (for he fights the illness, not the sick person), so also God is good, who provides salvation to all, through particular punishments.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“It is one like him, who leaves undone nothing foolish, who also says that God is the cause of evils. For I regard their sins as being of equal rank, since both alike deny the Good One, the one saying absolutely that he does not exist, while the other concludes that he is not good. For if he is the cause of evils, clearly he is not good, so that in both cases there is denial of God.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“The sheep was created to go to pasture, it has its head inclining downward, looking at the stomach and the parts below the stomach, since the fulfillment of happiness for these animals is filling the stomach and enjoying pleasure. But the human being no longer looks toward the stomach, but his head is lifted high toward things above, that he may look up to what is akin to him. His eyes do not incline toward the ground. Therefore do not make yourself go against nature; do not focus on earthly things but on heavenly things, where Christ is.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“When you see these rulers, preceded by a herald with an uplifted voice, when you see them terrorizing one and torturing another, confiscating this one’s property and delivering that one to death, do not fear what you see, do not be dismayed by those who command that these things happen, do not let your imagination astound you. Take to heart that God molded the human being, dust from the earth. If he is something else, fear him, but if he is dust from the earth, despise him.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“when the human being changed his habits and went outside the limit given him, after the flood, the Lord, knowing the humans to be profligate, granted them the enjoyment of all foods. “Eat all these things as you do green vegetables” [Gen 9.3]. By this concession the rest of living beings also received the freedom to eat them.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“First it said that God indeed created; in what follows it also says how he created. For if it simply said that he created, you would have thought that he created us in the same way as the domestic animals, as the wild beasts, as the plants, as the grass.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“For when you see an image exactly shaped like the prototype, you do not praise the image, but you marvel at the painter. Accordingly, so that the marvel may become mine and not another’s, he has left it to me to become according to the likeness of God. For I have that which is according to the image in being a rational being, but I become according to the likeness in becoming Christian.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“First the power to rule was conferred on you. O human, you are a ruling being. And why do you serve the passions as a slave? Why do you throw away your own dignity and become a slave of sin? For what reason do you make yourself a prisoner of the devil? You were appointed ruler of creation, and you have renounced the nobility of your own nature.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“When receiving authority for one year from the emperor, as a human from a human, as a mortal from a mortal, one receives it from one who does not truly possess it, for what authority does a human being receive in the soul? But you received it from God, not written on wooden tablets, nor on perishable leaves wasted on moths, but your nature has the divine voice inscribed in it, “Let them rule.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“He did not say, as with the others, “Let there be a human being.” Learn well your own dignity.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“Do not despise the wonder that is in you. For you are small in your own reckoning, but the Word will disclose that you are great.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition

“For the bodily sufferings and outward distresses have been invented to halt sin.”
― Basil the Great, On The Human Condition