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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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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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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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The human being is an animal who has received the vocation to become God.
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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Men whose sense of taste is destroyed by sickness, sometimes think honey sour. A diseased eye does not see many things which do exist, and notes many things which do not exist. The same thing frequently takes place with regard to the force of words, when the critic is inferior to the writer.
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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Do not despise the fish because they are absolutely unable to speak or to reason, but fear lest you may be even more unreasonable than they by resisting the command of the Creator. Listen to the fish, who through their actions all but utter this word: 'We set out on this long journey for the perpetuation of our species.
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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God who created us has granted us the faculty of speech that we might disclose the counsels of our hearts to one another and that, since we possess our human nature in common, each of us might share his thoughts with his neighbor, bringing them forth from the secret recesses of the heart as from a treasury.
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
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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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O sinner, be not discouraged, but have recourse to Mary in all you necessities. Call her to your assistance, for such is the divine Will that she should help in every kind of necessity.
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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When someone steals a person's clothes, we call him a thief. Should we not also give the same name to the one who could clothe the naked but does not?
Saint Basil
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The bread you store up belongs to the hungry the cloak that lies in your chest belongs to the naked the gold you have hidden in the ground belongs to the poor.
Saint Basil
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We should not think that we achieve success in preaching through our own devices, but we should rely entirely on God.
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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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
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The woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. With us there is no nice enquiry as to its being formed or unformed.
Saint Basil
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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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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