A horrible human toll the Russian Orthodox Church suffered throughout almost the entire 20th century. The Church is just rising from its knees. Our young post-Soviet state is just learning to respect the Church as an independent institution.

Happiness doesn't depend on the actual number of blessings we manage to scratch from life, only our attitude towards them.

When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.

... people don't know what they are striving for. They waste themselves in senseless thrashing around for the sake of a handful of goods and die without realizing their spiritual wealth.

Even the most broad-minded of us can embrace only that part of truth into which our own snout has blundered.

It makes me happier, more secure, to think that I do not have to plan and manage everything for myself, that I am only a sword made sharp to smite the unclean forces, an enchanted sword to cleave and disperse them. Grant, O Lord, that I may not break as I strike! Let me not fall from Thy hand!

Human beings yield in many situations, even important and spiritual and central ones, as long as it prolongs one's well-being.