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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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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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Any one who chooses will set up for a literary critic, though he cannot tell us where he went to school, or how much time was spent in his education, and knows nothing about letters at all.
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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Resolve to treat the things in your possession as belonging to others.
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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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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Good masters teach good doctrine, but that taught by evil masters is wholly evil.
Saint Basil
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Strive to attain to the greater virtues, but do not neglect the lesser ones. Do not make light of a fall even if it be the most venial of faults rather, be quick to repair it by repentance, although many others may commit a large number of faults, slight and grievous, and remain unrepentant.
Saint Basil
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He who confesses magic or sorcery shall do penance for the time of murder, and shall be treated in the same manner as he who convicts himself of this sin.
Saint Basil
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Troubles are usually the brooms and shovels that smooth the road to a good man's fortune.
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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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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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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He who sows courtesy reaps friendship.
Saint Basil
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If everyone would take only according to his needs and would leave the surplus to the needy, no one would be rich, no one poor, no one in misery.
Saint Basil
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Drunkenness, the ruin of reason, the destruction of strength, premature old age, momentary death.
Saint Basil
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Just as we would have no need of the farmer's labor and toil if we were living amid the delights of paradise, so also we would not require the medical art for relief if we were immune to disease, as was the case, by God's gift, at the time of Creation before the Fall.
Saint Basil
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Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the hunger.
Saint Basil
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The hairsplitting difference between formed and unformed makes no difference to us. Whoever deliberately commits abortion is subject to the penalty for homicide.
Saint Basil
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It is impious to say that evil has its origin from God, because naught contrary is produced by the contrary. Life does not generate death, nor is darkness the beginning of light, nor is disease the maker of health, but in the changes of conditions there are transitions from one condition to the contrary.
Saint Basil
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All who call the Holy Ghost a creature we pity, on the ground that, by this utterance, they are falling into the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against Him.
Saint Basil