Damascene Quotes & Sayings

It must not be supposed that the heavens or the luminaries are endowed with life(3). For they are inanimate and insensible(4). So that when the divine Scripture saith, Let the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad(5), it is the angels in heaven and the men on earth that are invited to rejoice. — John Damascene

But this is what leads the heretics astray: that they look upon nature and person as the same thing — John Damascene

Instead of negotiating or begging for mercy, [my brother Damascene] challenged them to kill him. "Go ahead," he said. "What are you waiting for? Today is my day to go to God. I can feel Him all around us. He is watching, waiting to take me home. Go ahead
finish your work and send me to paradise. I pity you for killing people like it's some kind of child's game. Murder is no game: If you offend God, you will pay for your fun. The blood of the innocent people you cut down will follow you to your reckoning. But I am praying for you ... I pray that you see the evil you're doing and ask God's forgiveness before it's too late. — Immaculee Ilibagiza

It may be added, that the same change took place in dogmatic teaching, as in the exposition of Scripture. This indeed was still more to be expected, for the issue of controversies and the decrees of Councils had given to the doctrinal statements of the Fathers an authority, or rather prerogative, which was never claimed for their commentaries. Accordingly, S. John Damascene's work on the Orthodox Faith in the viiith century is scarcely more than a careful selection and combination of sentences and phrases from the great theologians who preceded him, principally S. Gregory Nazianzen. A comment or scholia by the same author upon S. Paul's Epistles have come down to us, which are mainly taken from S. Chrysostom, but with some use of other expositors. — Thomas Aquinas

Do not say, 'I am only a boy'; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord. — Jeremiah

If we are genuinely interested in our kids spending less time on their devices, we need to curb our own habit of multitasking and resist the temptation to stay in constant contact and check responses. We also need to keep having conversations with our kids about the benefits of taking a break from screen time. — Cindy Pierce

Saul of Tarsus on the Damascene road. — Christopher Hitchens

In Damascus:
poems become diaphanous
They're neither sensual
nor intellectual
they are what echo says
to echo ... — Mahmoud Darwish

I think that's what activates the Tea Party Movement. What they see is the government interfering with their lives and with the inheritance of their children. Are we going to pass down liberty or deficits? And that's really what this movement is about. — Sharron Angle

Had God kept from being made those who through His goodness were to have existence, but who by their own choice were to become evil, then evil would have prevailed over the goodness of God. Thus, all things which God makes He makes good, but each one becomes good or evil by his own choice. So, even if the Lord did say: 'It were better for him if that man had not been born,' He did not say so in deprecation of His own creature, but in deprecation of that creature's choice and rashness. — John Damascene

The way the diamond caused people to reasses her
their palpable appreciation that Drew was loved by someone, was someone worth loving — Daphne Kalotay

Envy is pain over the good fortune of others. — John Damascene

If you can charm everyone it means you don't care about anyone in particular. — Christopher Hitchens

In Damascus:
the traveler sings to himself:
I return from Syria
neither alive
nor dead
but as clouds
that ease the butterfly's burden
from my fugitive soul — Mahmoud Darwish

The Creator, then, being uncreated, is also wholly immutable. And what could this be other than Deity? — John Damascene

He who longs alway after God, he seeth Him: for God is in all things. Existing things are dependent on that which is, and nothing can be unless it is in that which is. God then is mingled with everything, maintaining their nature: and in His holy flesh the God-Word is made one in subsistence and is mixed with our nature, yet without confusion. — John Damascene

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above. Don't fence me in. Let me ride through the wide open country that I love Don't fence me in Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees Send me off forever but I ask you please Don't fence me in — Cole Porter

The Son is the counsel and wisdom and power of the Father. — John Damascene

since the wickedness of the Evil One has prevailed so mightily against man's nature as even to drive some into denying the existence of God, that most foolish and woe-fulest pit of destruction (whose folly David, revealer of the Divine meaning, exposed when he said(9), The fool said in his heart, There is no God), — John Damascene

The angel energises in different places by the quickness of his nature and the promptness and speed by which he can change his place: but the Deity, Who is everywhere and above all, energises at the same time in diverse ways with one simple energy. — John Damascene

They'd reached St Thomas's and climbed the half-dozen wooden steps to the small veranda. Gamache — Louise Penny

For generation means that the begetter produces out of his essence offspring similar in essence. But creation and making mean that the creator and maker produces from that which is external, and not out of his own essence, a creation of an absolutely dissimilar nature(3). — John Damascene

The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school. — George Bernard Shaw

It's all about impressing people. — Christine Taylor

No one has rightly sought the truth who has not encountered at the end of this search - whether to accept or reject Him - our Lord, Jesus Christ, "the Way, the Truth, and the Life," Truth that stands against the world and is a reproach to all worldliness. - Eugene Rose — Damascene Christensen

Be loving towards yourself, then you will be able to love others too. — Rajneesh

evil is nothing else than absence of goodness, just as darkness also is absence of light. For goodness is the light of the mind, and, similarly, evil is the darkness of the mind. Light, therefore, being the work of the Creator and being made good (for God saw all that He made, and behold they were exceeding good(8)) produced darkness at His free-will. — John Damascene

all the statements made about God that imply body have some hidden meaning and teach us what is above us by means of something familiar to ourselves, with the exception of any statement concerning the bodily sojourn of the God-Word. — John Damascene

it is quite impossible for us men clothed about with this dense covering of flesh to understand or speak of the divine and lofty and immaterial energies of the Godhead, except by the use of images and types and symbols derived from our own life(7). — John Damascene