The angels surround and help the priest when he is celebrating Mass.
Saint AugustineRead
Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.
Interpretation
Emphasizes the power of individual actions and perceptions in shaping one's experience of life.
Saint Augustine's quote reflects the idea that our circumstances and the quality of 'times' we experience are largely influenced by how we choose to live our lives. Instead of passively lamenting over adversity, he encourages us to live well and positively, suggesting that our attitude and actions are integral in transforming difficult situations into better times.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming challenges.
The angels surround and help the priest when he is celebrating Mass.
There is no health in those who are displeased by an element in Your creation, just as there was none in me when I was displeased by many things You had made. Because my soul didn't dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to You whatever was displeasing.
Who can map out the various forces at play in one soul? Man is a great depth, O Lord. The hairs of his head are easier by far to count than his feeling, the movements of his heart.
Whatever skills I have acquired, whatever gifts I have been given, I place them at Your service.
Everyone who observes himself doubting observes a truth, and about that which he observes he is certain; therefore he is certain about a truth. Everyone therefore who doubts whether truth exists has in himself a truth on which not to doubt.... Hence one who can doubt at all ought not to doubt the existence of truth.
Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch or weep tonight, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend your sick ones, O Lord Jesus Christ; rest your weary ones; bless your dying ones; soothe your suffering ones; pity your afflicted ones; shield your joyous ones; and all for your love's sake. Amen.
Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?
The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.
Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow: In Flanders fields.
But if by some miracle and all our struggle, the earth is spared, only justice to every living being will save humankind.
Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us.
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