"The character of people in the second half of the 19th century is self-worship, self-legislation (autonomy), materialism in life, and spiritual skepticism (unbelief)."

"Always consider it a great blessing to converse in prayer with the Lord, or with the Most Pure Lady, the Mother of God, or with Angels, or with holy people, and pray to Them always with joy and with a tremble of reverence, remembering with Whom you, an unclean and insignificant worm, are speaking."

"Avarice is from the devil, generosity is from God."

"All Israel shall be saved (Rom. 11:26), all Israel, that is, the true Israelites, like Nathanael, of whom the Lord said: “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” (John 1:47). These are the Israelites who will be saved. The majority of Jews, because of their cunning and countless unrepented evil deeds, will perish. Change quickly with a good change, every Christian, as long as the doors of God’s mercy are not closed to you. Do works of mercy, while it is day; the night is coming, when no one can work (John 9:4)."

"Send your petition to God or the saints by the telegraph of faith, and you will immediately receive an answer."

"The uneducated are infants in Christ, to whom the Lord sometimes reveals His secrets."

"The world is in a state of slumber, a sinful sleep. God awakens it with wars, plagues, fires, destructive storms, earthquakes, floods, and crop failures."

"Whatever passions the enemies fight you with, endure without despondency, without bitterness, with meekness and humility, and do not let the movements of impatience, malice, murmuring, and blasphemy into your heart."

"It has been calculated astronomically that the distance from the Earth to the Sun is one hundred and fifty million versts (approximately 160 million km)."

"A human who is embittered against us is a sick person."

"Icons are the Church's response to the crying need of our nature."

"The Church is eternal truth, because it is united with Truth—Christ—and is animated by the Spirit of Truth."

"God is the creative, living, and life-giving Thought."

"God is Spirit, a simple Being."

"Intellectuals have abandoned heavenly wisdom and grasped at earthly vanity, falsehood, mirage, and impenetrable darkness."

"Food and drink should be used only to strengthen one's forces, and not for gluttony."

"Faith is the key to God's treasury."

"The fiery catastrophe of the Earth expected at the end of the world could occur from the collision of the Earth with one of the wandering fragments or comets."

"Every person on Earth is sick with the fever of sin, with the blindness of sin, possessed by the rage of sin; and since sin consists primarily of malice and pride, every person, as one suffering from the illness of sin, must be treated with gentle love—an important truth that we often forget; we often, very often, act contrary to it: to malice, we add malice with our own bitterness; to pride, we oppose with pride. This is how evil grows, rather than diminishes; it is not cured, but becomes more infected. Lord, have mercy on us, have mercy on humanity!"

"Envy in a Christian is madness."

"The Church is truly an earthly paradise."

"Caprice is the germ of heart decay, the rust of the heart, the moth of love, the seed of malice, an abomination to the Lord."

"Arius, the heretic, reduced the Creator to the rank of creatures and did not recognize Him as consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father, a single Being with Him and the Holy Spirit."

"Adam and Eve ruined themselves through gluttony."

"Gluttony is the seed of decay and destruction of the soul."

"Heed: for the purification of your heart from sins, you will receive an infinite reward—you will see God, your all-good Creator, your Provider. The struggle to cleanse the heart is difficult because it is accompanied by great deprivations and sorrows, but the reward is great."

"Humility is a great virtue, the mother of all virtues, the mother of all blessings."

"Humility is the foundation of all virtues."

"The Lord is the perfect Possessor and Master of all creation."

"The Liturgy is a supper, a meal of God's love for the human race."

"The Lutherans say: “Why should we ask for the prayers of the saints for ourselves? We ask God Himself”—and they contradict themselves: for why do they ask the pastor to pray for them? They would pray without a pastor if everyone had the same access to God and there was no need for sanctified intercessors for us. — What blindness! — They say: by praying to the saints, we are idolaters. That is not true. We do not honor a single saint as God, we do not pray to a single saint as God, but only ask for his prayers for us; is there even a shadow of idolatry here? — Just as we ask living ministers and intercessors for us before God to pray for us, so we also ask the heavenly intercessors, who have great boldness before Him due to their love for God; moreover, many of them were intercessors and advocates for the world before God even here on Earth; there, in heaven, their activity only continues, has larger dimensions, and is especially strong, because it is not hindered by heavy and sluggish flesh. — All the saints, although they have finished their earthly course, are alive: “For He is not a God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him” (Luke 20:38)."

"Leo Tolstoy and writers like him, whose number is countless, have appeared and live on Earth to cloud and corrupt with their godlessness, faithlessness, and anarchy the multitude of people who follow them and read their blasphemous writings. Lord, destroy them from the Earth or turn them to faith, humble their demonic pride!"

"The life of the heart is love; its death is malice and enmity against a brother."

"Mercy is to love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, to those who assault you, to those who persecute you, to protect the persecuted, and so on."

"A neighbor is a being equal to me, the same human as I, the very image of God."

"At night, our soul is free from worldly vanity, and therefore the spiritual world can freely act upon it, and it can freely accept its impressions."

"The Orthodox Church with its divine service educates us to be citizens of heaven by teaching us every virtue, which is exemplified by the life of the Mother of God and all the saints, and by cleansing, sanctifying, and deifying us in the sacraments."

"Pride is a demon; malice is the same demon; envy is the same demon; lewd filth is the same demon; forced blasphemy is the same demon; forced doubt in the truth is a demon; despondency is a demon; there are various passions, but in all of them one Satan acts; various passions, but together they are the barking of Satan in various ways, and a person becomes one, one spirit with Satan."

"A priest, as a physician of souls, must himself be free from soul ailments, i.e., from passions, in order to heal others."

"Praying without sincere feeling is hypocrisy."

"Respect yourself as the image of God."

"To repent means to feel in your heart the falsehood, madness, and guilt of your sins—it means to realize that you have offended your Creator, Lord, Father, and Benefactor, who is infinitely holy and infinitely disgusted by sin—it means to desire with all your soul to correct and atone for them."

"Sins are secret snakes gnawing at the heart of a person and his entire being; they give him no peace, incessantly sucking his heart; sins are sharp thorns constantly piercing the soul; sins are spiritual darkness."

"To sin is a great disadvantage and madness."

"The flesh flourishes, but the soul withers."

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

"Democracy is in hell, and in heaven, it is the Kingdom."

"The day is a symbol of the transience of earthly life."

"Sorrows are a great teacher."

"Forced prayer develops sanctimony."