If every man took only what was sufficient for his needs, leaving the rest to those in want, there would be no rich and no poor.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of sharing resources for equitable living.
Saint Basil suggests that if individuals were to take only what they need and leave the excess for others who are in need, societal disparities between wealth and poverty would cease to exist. This quote reflects a philosophy centered on altruism and the belief in a communal responsibility to ensure everyone has access to necessary resources.
In practice
A speaker at a charity event might use this quote to inspire donations.
Now, if you notice how the swan, putting its neck down into the deep water, brings up food for itself from below, then you will discover the wisdom of the Creator, in that He gave it a neck longer than its feet for this reason, that it might, as if lowering a sort of fishing line, procure the food hidden in the deep water.
When you have become God's in the measure he desires, then he himself will bestow you upon others; unless, to your greater glory, he chooses to keep you all to himself.
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.
I heard many discourses which were good for the soul, but I could not discover in the case of any one of the teachers that his life was worthy of his words.
To lovers of the truth, nothing can be put before God and hope in Him.
When someone steals another's clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.
I found earthquakes, even when I was in them, deeply satisfying, abruptly revealed evidence of the scheme in action. That the schemes could destroy the works of man might be a personal regret but remained, in the larger picture I had come to recognize, a matter of abiding indifference. No eye was on the sparrow. No eye was watching me.
If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.
All things are nourished together without their injuring one another. The courses of the seasons, and of the sun and moon, are pursued without any collision among them. The smaller energies are like river currents; the greater energies are seen in mighty transformations. It is this which makes heaven and earth so great.
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
It is always interesting to see people in dead earnest, from whatever cause, and earthquakes make everybody earnest.
National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement.
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