Vices

"To be useful as a Christian, a man must keep himself free from all malign feelings, from all bitterness of resentment. Even righteous indignation must not drag Love from her throne. Over all the soul's passions Love must preside in serene majesty. The Christian worker must learn (and the sooner the better) if he has not already learned, that there is something better for a Christian than to plan revenge, and nurse resentment, and call down fire from heaven, even on those who show themselves base and unworthy."

"We are strangers to Christian love, if we harbor malice or revenge in our hearts toward any of our fellow-creatures, whatever treatment we receive at their hands."

"Helena Roerich, Letters II, 7 May 1938 »"

"Depressed people are said to be deprived of their share. Ponder these words. Who has deprived them of their inherent share? First of all they deprived themselves of any possibilities. They began their own destruction long ago. Discontent, malice, irritation cut off the path to joy. Dark thoughts deprived them of the source of strength."

"I shall say of treason to the fanatics and bigots. They assume that treason is only a matter of thirty pieces of silver, but they forget that it is contained in each blasphemy and slander. One should not think that a malicious word is not also treason. It is precisely malice that is often inseparable from treason and slander. One and the same black tree nurtures these loathsome branches, and their fruits are as black as the roots of shame. One must speedily liberate oneself from the horror of malicious words. 376."

"It is not fitting for people to sit in a chicken-coop. It is time to know the planet and to assist it... It also cannot be forgotten that people can gnaw each other in two. This consideration must not be forgotten, since malice is deluging the Earth. 112."

"Malice admits leprosy and pestilence. Malice can transform a peaceful fireside into a swarm of snakes. Qualities of malice are not befitting the community. The common task is General Welfare."

"The spirit burdened with malice cannot rise. But kindness set free soars into the radiance of the Light. 400."

"The idea underlying such endless discussion and dreaming about the physical act is that sexual expertise confers worldliness and is therefore part of becoming an affirmed individual. This is a curious suggestion... Sex is many things — a need, a desire, an emotion, a release — but it has nothing to do with worldly sophistication, character building or even existential action. Sex, in general, is more of an obstacle than anything else for those who wish to free themselves and act as individuals... [W]e aren't dealing with a successful affirmation of responsible individualism in the real world. We are creating private dreams which compensate for the fracturing of the individual and the castration of his or her power in public life."

"I had as lief preach humanity to a battle of eagles, as to urge honesty and integrity upon those who have determined to be rich, and to gain it by gambling stakes, and madmen's ventures."

"They best pass over the world who trip over it quickly; for it is but a bog. If we stop, we sink."

"Christianity does not condemn traffic, commerce, material activities of any kind. Its highest development is possible with the busiest life. To be a first-rate business man does not involve being a fourth-rate Christian. Buying, possessing, accumulating — this is not worldliness. But doing this in the love of it, with no love of God paramount — doing it so that thoughts of eternity and God are an intrusion — doing it so that one's spirit is secularized in the process; this is worldliness."

"A Christian making money fast is just a man in a cloud of dust, it will fill his eyes if he be not careful."

"The only true method of action in this world is to be in it, but not of it."

"Christians should live in the world, but not be filled with it. A ship lives in the water; but if the water gets into the ship, she goes to the bottom. So Christians may live in the world; but if the world gets into them, they sink."

"We wonder why a certain church-member is so lax in his devotions and loose in his practices. The reason is that, while his trunk and his branches are over on the church side of the wall, his roots run under the wall and dwell in the bad soil on the other side."

"Not by empty protestations against the pleasures of the world, and cynical denunciations of its enjoyments, but by our superiority to its perishing greatness, to its fading beauties, and its impotent antagonisms, are we to express our redemption from its power."

"There is no surer evidence of an unconverted state than to have the things of the world uppermost in our aim, love, and estimation."

"Show me the men who imbibe the spirit of the world, who choose the company of the world, who imitate the example of the world, conform to the maxims of the world, are swallowed up in the gayety, fashions, and amusements of the world; — behold, these are the ungodly, who are brought into desolation as in a moment."

"Conformity to the world has in all ages proved the ruin of the church. It is utterly impossible to live in nearness to God, and in friendship with the world."

"There is such a thing as a worldly spirit, and there is such a thing as an unworldly spirit — and according as we partake of the one or the other, the savor of the sacrifice of our lives is ordinary, common-place, poor, and base; or elevating, invigorating, useful, noble, and holy."

"Unworldliness is this — to hold things from God in the perpetual conviction that they will not last; to have the world, and not let the world have us; to be the world's masters, and not the world's slaves."

"I liked Charentz straight off, but more important than this was the feeling that I had that he was a truly great man. Human greatness is a rather difficult thing to account for, and more often than not one is mistaken in one's hunches about somebody one has met. Charentz seemed great to me, I think, because he was made of a mixture of proud virtues and amusing flaws. On the one hand, his independence of spirit was balanced by a humorous worldliness, his acute intelligence by a curiosity that frequently made him seem naive, his profoundly gentle manners by a kind of mocking mischievousness which might easily be mistaken for rudeness. But he was never rude, he was witty, and the purpose of his wit was to keep himself from the terrible condition of pomposity."

"Lift thyself up, look. around, and see something higher and brighter than earth, earthworms, and earthly darkness."

"Set not your heart upon the world, since God hath not made it your portion."

"Day and night, and every moment, there are voices about us. All the hours speak as they pass; and in every event there is a message to us; and all our circumstances talk with us; but it is in Divine language, that worldliness misunderstands, that selfishness is frightened at, and that only the children of God hear rightly and happily."

"Faith is the inspiration of nobleness, it is the strength of integrity; it is the life of love, and is everlasting growth for it; it is courage of soul, and bridges over for our crossing the gulf between worldliness and heavenly-mindedness; and it is the sense of the unseen, without which we could not feel God nor hope for heaven."

"The Buddha Is Nearer to Us You see clearly a man, simple, devout, lonely, battling for light, a vivid human personality, not a myth. Beneath a mass of miraculous fable I feel that there also was a man. He too, gave a message to mankind universal in its character. Many of our best modern ideas are in closest harmony with it. All the miseries and discontents of life are due, he taught, to selfishness. Selfishness takes three forms — one, the desire to satisfy the senses; second, the craving for immortality; and the third the desire for prosperity and worldliness. Before a man can become serene he must cease to live for his senses or himself. Then he merges into a greater being. Buddha in a different language called men to self-forgetfulness five hundred years before Christ. In some ways he was near to us and our needs. Buddha was more lucid upon our individual importance in service than Christ, and less ambiguous upon the question of personal immortality."

"Do we have all the hatred and all the aversion for the world which Our Lord requires, and which his example must inspire in us?"

"I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated"

"Anyone who claims to love both the world and the Creator of the world is lying."

"O my God! close my eyes, that I may see Thee; separate me from the world, that I may enjoy Thy company."

"There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life."

"The world is water and the mind milk. If you pour milk into water they become one; you cannot find the pure milk any more. But turn the milk into curd and churn it into butter. Then, when that butter is placed in water, it will float. So, practice spiritual discipline in solitude and obtain the butter of knowledge and love. Even if you keep that butter in the water of the world the two will not mix. The butter will float."

"Suppose the offer were this: You shall die slowly; your blood shall daily grow cold, your flesh petrify, your heart beat at last only as a rusted group of iron valves. Your life shall fade from you, and sink through the earth into the ice of Caina; but, day by day, your body shall be dressed more gaily, and set in higher chariots, and have more orders on its breast—crowns on its head, if you will. Men shall bow before it, stare and shout round it, crowd after it up and down the streets; build palaces for it, feast with it at their tables’ heads all the night long; your soul shall stay enough within it to know what they do, and feel the weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, and the furrow of the crown-edge on the skull;—no more. Would you take the offer, verbally made by the death-angel? Would the meanest among us take it, think you? Yet practically and verily we grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure; many of us grasp at it in its fulness of horror. Every man accepts it, who desires to advance in life without knowing what life is; who means only that he is to get more horses, and more footmen, and more fortune, and more public honour, and—not more personal soul."

"By constantly repeating, 'I am free, I am free', a man verily becomes free. On the other hand, by constantly repeating, 'I am bound, I am bound', he certainly becomes bound to worldliness. The fool who says only, 'I am a sinner, I am a sinner', verily drowns himself in worldliness. One should rather say: 'I have chanted the name of God. How can I be a sinner? How can I be bound?'"

"So when the great Calamity comes; The day when man remembers all that he strove for, And hell is made manifest to him who sees. Then as for him who is inordinate, And prefers the life of this world, Hell is surely the abode. And as for him who fears to stand before his Lord and restrains himself from low desires, The Garden is surely the abode."

"(This) worldly life is only amusement and diversion. And if you believe and fear Allah, He will give you your rewards and not ask you for your properties."

"O mankind, indeed the promise of Allah is truth, so let not the worldly life delude you and be not deceived about Allah by the Deceiver."

"The ones who prefer the worldly life over the Hereafter and avert (people) from the way of Allah, seeking to make it (seem) deviant. Those are in extreme error."

"O you who believe, what (excuse) have you that when it is said to you, Go forth in Allah's way, you should incline heavily to earth? Are you contented with this world's life instead of the Hereafter? The provision of this world's life is but little as compared with the Hereafter."

"Every soul will taste death. And you will be paid your reward fully only on the Resurrection day. Then whoever is removed far from the Fire and is made to enter the Garden, he indeed attains the object. And the life of this world is nothing but an enjoyment of delusion."

"The fascination of worldly life today is very powerful indeed, and many people regard conformity to it as an inescapable and indeed a wise course to take."

"The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue, ever occupied with feasting and such, are carried downward, and there, as is fitting, they wander their whole life long, neither ever looking upward to the truth above them nor rising toward it, nor tasting pure and lasting pleasures. Like cattle, always looking downward with their heads bent toward the ground and the banquet tables, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. In order to increase their possessions they kick and butt with horns and hoofs of steel and kill each other, insatiable as they are."

"A dim consciousness of infinite mystery and grandeur lies beneath all the commonplace of life. There is an awfulness and a majesty around us, in all our little worldliness."

"May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."

"We speak wisdom, however, among those who are full grown; yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who are coming to nothing."

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."

"The much quoted text, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36) does not mean that the kingdom is not, or will not be, in this world or on this earth. … When Jesus and his disciples are said to be in the world but not of the world, the meaning is clear enough. Although they live in the world they are not worldly, they do not subscribe to the present values and standards of the world. … The values of the kingdom [of God] are different from, and opposed to, the values of this world. There is no reason for thinking that it means the kingdom will float in the air somewhere above the earth or that it will be an abstract entity without any tangible social and political structure."

"The civilized classes and nations are swept away by the grand rush for contemptible wealth. Never was the world worldlier, never was it emptier of love and goodness."