truisms

[Ekaterina]

O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart. Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there Thy cheerful beams.
Saint Augustine

[Ekaterina]

Pray as though everything depended on God.
Work as though everything depended on you.
Saint Augustine

[Ekaterina]

Our virtue, therefore, must not be contaminated with fault, but must be single-minded and blameless and free from all that can bring reproach. For what profit is there in fasting twice a week, if you so doing serve only as a pretext for ignorance and vanity, and if it makes you supercilious, haughty and selfish? You tithe your possessions and make a boast of it; but in another way you provoke God's anger, by condemning men generally on this account and accusing others. And you yourself are puffed up, though not crowned by the divine decree for righteousness, but on the contrary, heap praises upon yourself."

St. Cyril of Alexandria.

[Ekaterina]

Once again, as we said above, in the same way that God gives to each his inheritance in the pure mansions of heaven according to each one's worthiness, so in the body of the Church shall each be reckoned as in the portion of Christ as he is worthy of it. A little later in the same epistle, the Apostle makes this clear when he says: "But God has arranged the members of the body, each one of them, as He chose...for while there are many parts, yet one body" [1Cor: 12:18, 20].

St. Symeon the New Theologian, On the Mystical Life, Vol I

[Ekaterina]

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
John Adams

[Ekaterina]

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.
John Adams

[Ekaterina]

Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
John Adams