If you would rise, shun luxury, for luxury lowers and degrades.
Interpretation
Avoiding luxury is essential for personal growth and integrity.
This quote by Saint John Chrysostom emphasizes that seeking luxury can hinder an individual's development and moral character. By encouraging people to shun luxury, it suggests that a life of simplicity and restraint promotes true elevation and virtue in one's life.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth during a conference.
No one has ever been accused for not providing ornaments, but for those who neglect their neighbour a hell awaits with an inextinguishable fire and torment in the company of the demons. Do not, therefore, adorn the church and ignore your afflicted brother, for he is the most precious temple of all.
It is simply impossible to lead, without the aid of prayer, a virtuous life.
When we teach our children to be good, to be gentle, to be forgiving (all these are attributes of God), to be generous, to love their follow men, to regard this present age as nothing, we instill virtue in their souls, and reveal the image of God within them.
Abba Moses asked Abba Sylvanus, Can a person lay a new foundation every day? The old man replied, If you work hard, you can lay a new foundation every moment. Abba Pimen said, To throw yourself before God, not to measure your progress, to leave behind all self-will; these are the instruments for the work of the soul. The desire to rule is the mother of heresies.
I hear no one boast, that he hath a knowledge of the Scriptures, but that he owneth a Bible written in golden characters. And tell me then, what profiteth this? The Holy Scriptures were not given to us that we should enclose them in books, but that we should engrave them upon our hearts.
Prayer should be the means by which I, at all times, receive all that I need, and, for this reason, be my daily refuge, my daily consolation, my daily joy, my source of rich and inexhaustible joy in life.
Job never saw why he suffered, but he saw God, and that was enough.
Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.
To judge a man by his weakest link or deed is like judging the power of the ocean by one wave.
Every man on the planet should do some physical work: he should help in the bread-labor of mankind. He should also do some of the intellectual work: he should help in the thought-labor of mankind. In a word, every thinker should work, and every worker should think.
Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other Βpeople. Nothing that happens to a writer β however happy, however tragic β is ever wasted.
I think a lot of people, even Christians, are willing to be satisfied with gaining lots and lots of biblical knowledge - and many people go to Bible studies and don't realize it isn't enough to know what's right, it's applying the information and the knowledge that you have.
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