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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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Saint Basil
Bishop
Catholic Deacon
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Philosopher
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Caesarea Mazaca
Saint Basil the Great
Basilius Magnus
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Everyone
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Take
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Misery
Leave
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More quotes by 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.
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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.
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Do not measure your loss by itself if you do, it will seem intolerable but if you will take all human affairs into account you will find that some comfort is to be derived from them.
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Troubles are usually the brooms and shovels that smooth the road to a good man's fortune.
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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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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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Among irrational animals the love of the offspring and of the parents for each other is extraordinary because God, who created them, compensated for the deficiency of reason by the superiority of their senses.
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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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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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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The bread which you use is the bread of the hungry the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked the shoes you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.
Saint Basil
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As we were baptized, so we profess our belief. As we profess our belief, so also we offer praise. As then baptism has been given us by the Savior, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, so, in accordance with our baptism, we make the confession of the creed, and our doxology in accordance with our creed.
Saint Basil
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I cannot persuade myself that without love to others, and without, as far as rests with me, peaceableness toward all, I can be called a worthy servant of Jesus Christ.
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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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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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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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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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.
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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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