To lovers of the truth, nothing can be put before God and hope in Him.
Interpretation
Those who seek truth value their relationship with God above all else.
This quote by Saint Basil emphasizes that for true seekers of knowledge and understanding, their faith in God and their hope in Him are the highest priorities. It suggests that when pursuing truth, divine guidance and hope should take precedence over all other pursuits and distractions.
In practice
In a discussion about spirituality and personal beliefs.
Now, if you notice how the swan, putting its neck down into the deep water, brings up food for itself from below, then you will discover the wisdom of the Creator, in that He gave it a neck longer than its feet for this reason, that it might, as if lowering a sort of fishing line, procure the food hidden in the deep water.
When you have become God's in the measure he desires, then he himself will bestow you upon others; unless, to your greater glory, he chooses to keep you all to himself.
What is there astonishing in the death of a mortal? But we are grieved at his dying before his time. Are we sure that this was not his time? We do not know how to pick and choose what is good for our souls, or how to fix the limits of the life of man.
I heard many discourses which were good for the soul, but I could not discover in the case of any one of the teachers that his life was worthy of his words.
If every man took only what was sufficient for his needs, leaving the rest to those in want, there would be no rich and no poor.
When someone steals another's clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.
For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. ... That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.
The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.
The great religions are the ships, Poets the life boats. Every sane person I know has jumped overboard.
The Heart of the matter is Soul, nothing else.
To shut one's eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice.
Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
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