Isaac of Nineveh Quotes

As for ourselves, yes, we must be meek, bear injustice, malice, rash judgment. We must turn the other cheek, give up our cloak, go a second mile.

Reject hatred without hating.

I'll not hurt thee, says Uncle Toby, rising with the fly in his hand. Go, he says, opening the window to let it escape. Why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me.

True ahimsa should mean a complete freedom from ill-will and anger and hate and an overflowing love for all.

He who aspires to paradise should learn to deal with people with kindness.

Only the gentle are ever really strong.

Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.

We are taught that revenge is strong and compassion is weak. We are taught that power is more important than love.

Jesus Christ is a prince of peace. He told us to live in peace. He told us to love our enemies. He told us to do good to them that spitefully use us.

I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.

Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving.

To repay evils with kindness is the religion I was taught to practise, and this will forever be my rule.

I want to be a Christian like Christ - loving and accepting of other people.

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

May we not succumb to thoughts of violence and revenge today, but rather to thoughts of mercy and compassion. We are to love our enemies that they might be returned to their right minds.

Humility is attentive patience.

What's hard, it seems, is living up to the words spoken by Jesus Christ, who preached naught but love and mercy and justice and humility.

The highest religious and spiritual ideals of any faith would invite us to a compassion for all lives destroyed by the violence that plagues us.

Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it.

The very first step in nonviolence is that we cultivate in our daily life, as between ourselves, truthfulness, humility, tolerance, loving kindness.

Compassion and love constitute non-violence in action. They are the source of all spiritual qualities: forgiveness, tolerance, all the virtues. They give meaning to our activities and makes them constructive. There is nothing amazing about being rich or highly educated; only when the individual has a warm heart do these attributes become worthwhile.

The highest degree of meekness consists in seeing, serving, honoring, and treating amiably, on occasion, those who are not to our taste, and who show themselves unfriendly, ungrateful, and troublesome to us.

Love and ahimsa are matchless in their effect.

The beginning of divine wisdom is clemency and gentleness, which arise from greatness of soul and the bearing of infirmities.

In spiritual maturity, the opposite of injustice is not justice but compassion.