Do you think that the man-loving God has given you much so that you could use it only for your own benefit? No, but so that your abundance might supply the lack of others.

Are you angry? Be angry at your sins, beat your soul, afflict your conscience, but strict in judgement and a terrible punisher of your own sins. This is the benefit of anger, wherefore God placed it in us.

You see how many are the benefits of baptism, and some think its heavenly grace consists only in the remission of sins, but we have enumerated ten honors [it bestows]! For this reason we baptize even infants, though they are not defiled by [personal] sins, so that there may be given to them holiness, righteousness, adoption, inheritance, brotherhood with Christ, and that they may be his [Christ's] members

A mother experiences more than one death, even though she herself will only die once. She fears for her husband; she fears for her children; again she fears for the women and children who belong to her children. ... For each of these-whether for loss of possessions, bodily illness, or undesired misfortune-she mourns and grieves no less than those who suffer.

This is what an excellent teacher does; he does not follow his disciples' fancy everywhere, but leads them to his own mind, and pulls up the thorns, and then puts the seed in, and does not answer at once in all cases to the questions put to him.

Paul commands: 'Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the Traditions which you have been taught, whether by word or by our letter.' From this it is clear that they did not hand down everything by letter, but there is much also that was not written. Like that which was written, the unwritten too is worthy of belief. So let us regard the Tradition of the Church also as worthy of belief. Is it a Tradition? Seek no further.

Laughter does not seem to be a sin, but it leads to sin.