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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.

Saint Basil

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Saint Basil
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Caesarea Mazaca
Saint Basil the Great
Basilius Magnus
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More quotes by Saint Basil

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He who is guilty of unseemliness with males will be under discipline for the same time as adulterers.
Saint Basil
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While we try to amass wealth, make piles of money, get hold of the land as our real property, overtop one another in riches, we have palpably cast off justice, and lost the common good. I should like to know how any man can be just, who is deliberately aiming to get out of someone else what he wants for himself.
Saint Basil
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Good masters teach good doctrine, but that taught by evil masters is wholly evil.
Saint Basil
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He who sows courtesy reaps friendship.
Saint Basil
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It is not he who begins well who is perfect. It is he who ends well who is approved in God's sight.
Saint Basil
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In the very nature of every human being has been sown the seed of the ability to love. You and I ought to welcome this seed, cultivate it carefully, nourish it attentively and foster its growth by going to the school of God's commandments with help of His grace.
Saint Basil
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As it is impossible to verbally describe the sweetness of honey to one who has never tasted honey, so the goodness of God cannot be clearly communicated by way of teaching if we ourselves are not able to penetrate into the goodness of the Lord by our own experience.
Saint Basil
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Indulging in unrestrained and immoderate laughter is a sign of intemperance, of a want of control over one's emotions, and of failure to repress the soul's frivolity by a stern use of reason.
Saint Basil
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Lust hath these three companions: the first, blindness of understanding the second, hardness of heart the third, want of grace.
Saint Basil
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In truth, to know oneself seems to be the hardest of all things. Not only our eye, which observes external objects, does not use the sense of sight upon itself, but even our mind, which contemplates intently another's sin, is slow in the recognition of its own defects.
Saint Basil
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As the pilot of a vessel is tried in the storm as the wrestler is tried in the ring, the soldier in the battle, and the hero in adversity: so is the Christian tried in temptation.
Saint Basil
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Every evil is a sickness of soul, but virtue offers the cause of its health.
Saint Basil
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There is still time for endurance, time for patience, time for healing, time for change. Have you slipped? Rise up. Have you sinned? Cease. Do not stand among sinners, but leap aside.
Saint Basil
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Reprimand and rebuke should be accepted as healing remedies for vice and as conducive to good health. From this it is clear that those who pretend to be tolerant because they wish to flatter---those who thus fail to correct sinners---actually cause them to suffer supreme loss and plot the destruction of that life which is their true life.
Saint Basil
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Beside each believer stands an Angel as protector and shepherd, leading him to life.
Saint Basil
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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.
Saint Basil
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What is the benefit of fasting in our body while filling our souls with innumerable evils? He who does not play at dice, but spends his leisure otherwise, what nonsense does he not utter? What absurdities does he not listen to? Leisure without the fear of God is, for those who do not know how to use time, the teacher of wickedness.
Saint Basil
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I reckon silence more profitable than speech, for? in the words of the Preacher, 'The words of wise men are heard in quiet' (Eccles. 9:17).
Saint Basil
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Science which is acquired unwillingly, soon disappears that which is instilled into the mind in a pleasant and agreeable manner, is more lasting.
Saint Basil
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Therefore, let God inspired Scripture decide between us and on whichever side be found doctrines in harmony with the Word of God, in favor of that side will be cast the vote of truth
Saint Basil