To lovers of the truth, nothing can be put before God and hope in Him.
Interpretation
Those who seek truth value their relationship with God above all else.
This quote by Saint Basil emphasizes that for true seekers of knowledge and understanding, their faith in God and their hope in Him are the highest priorities. It suggests that when pursuing truth, divine guidance and hope should take precedence over all other pursuits and distractions.
In practice
In a discussion about spirituality and personal beliefs.
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.
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.
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.
My name is Stephen Leeds, and I am perfectly sane. My hallucinations, however, are all quite mad.
Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilization.
I don't see a lot of narratives written where a woman who looks like me gets to be beautiful and sexualized and upwardly mobile, middle-class, funny, quirky. They're very seldom written.
The massive bulk of the earth does indeed shrink to insignificance in comparison with the size of the heavens.
And we have made of ourselves living cesspools, and driven doctors to invent names for our diseases.
Idleness is the parent of psychology.
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