Pluralities and majorities

...are necessary for parliaments and parties but not for God's Church, which is the pillar and foundation of faith, independently of the above categories and even in contradiction of them...
St. Hilarion (Troitsky)

Living like the Fathers

It is one of the rules of politeness at such "ecumenical" gatherings that the heterodox are not informed that the first prerequisite for studying the Fathers is to have the same faith as the Fathers of Orthodoxy.
Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

On Susceptibility

If you have not faith, do not fear beasts so much as your faithlessness, which renders you susceptible of all corruption.
St. Basil the Great

Put out into deep water

In shallow waters there are only small fish; that is the entire catch. But in the greater depths, the danger is also greater. There you have large sea creatures and great storms. That is dangerous. But there are also much larger and better fish in enormous quantity; that is the catch. O, enlightened one, come therefore into the deep! "Put out into the deep" mysterious sea of life, but do not set out without Christ in your boat. By no means. ... Perhaps the winds could carry you away and cast you into an abyss. Perhaps the monstrous and enormous beasts of the sea will consume you. The winds, O enlightened one, those are your own passions which accompany you unavoidably if you set out into the deep without Christ.
St. Nikolaj (Velimirovic)

The speech of faith

Separate aspects of faith disintegrate only for scholastic theology, but, in living life, these aspects, each retaining its independence, become so closely interwoven that one idea imperceptibly evokes another. For a scholastic theologian, it is easy to say that the concepts Church, Holy Spirit, and Son of God are different: easy, because in his consciousness they are only concepts. But for a believer for whom all of these are realities that cannot be experienced independently of one another, realities that are interpenetrating and interconnected; for a believer who perceives them in their living givenness; for whom the Church is tangibly the body of Christ, the fullness of the Spirit sent by Christ; for such a believer, it is painful to make sharp divisions and separations, for they cut through living flesh. The speech of faith is in no wise like the speech of theology, and faith clothes its knowledge of dogmatic truth in a symbolic garment, in figurative language, which covers the higher truth and depth of contemplation in consistent contradictions.
St. Pavel (Florensky)

To gain the Kingdom

If, at times, the dogmas of the Faith seem to be like solid food, first endeavor to fulfill the moral dogmas of Christianity, then the understanding of the dogmas of the Faith will be revealed to you. Inquisitive questioning of higher things without effort regarding the improvement of your life does not bring any benefit. At one time, the monks of Egypt reflected about Melchisedek and not being able to come to a clear understanding about the mysterious personality of this ancient king and high priest, invited Abba Copres to their assembly and asked him about Melchisedek. Upon hearing this, Copres struck himself three times on the mouth and said, 'Woe to you Copres! You left that which God commanded you to do and you question that which God does not require of you.' Hearing him, the monks were ashamed and dispersed. St. John Chrysostom writes, 'And, if we adhere to the true dogmas and are not concerned about our behavior, we will not have any kind of benefit; and in the same way, if we concern ourselves about our behavior and neglect true dogmas, we will receive no benefit for our salvation. If we want to be delivered from Gehenna and to gain the kingdom, we need to be adorned on both sides: correctness of dogmas and honorable living.'
St. Nikolaj (Velimirovic)

To the strengthening of faith

Many do not allow even the thought that an intellectual man of our time could have such a lively and sincere faith as the simple masses do out of ignorance. But this is a great mistake. An educated man, once he gets past a certain [point] is able to believe much more deeply and ardently than an ordinary person who believes partly by habit (following the example of others), partly because his faith, his vague religious ideas are not troubled by any opposing ideas. There is nothing for him to conquer, no intellectual battles to fight. For him, what he must conquer in the spiritual arena are not ideas but passions, feelings, habits, anger, rudeness, malice, envy, greed, drunkenness, depravity, laziness, etc. For an intellectual the warfare is much more difficult and complex. Like the ordinary person he must battle all these passions and habits, but in addition he must also break his intellectual pride and consciously subjugate his mind to the teaching of the Church. Once we get past this mystical threshold, which I mentioned earlier, then our erudition will itself begin to help us in strengthening our faith.
Konstantin Leontiev

The purity of faith

...whenever the teaching of faith deviates even a little from its basic purity, the deviation, growing little by little, cannot help becoming a contradiction to faith. The lack of wholeness and inner unity of faith compels one to seek unity in abstract thinking; and reason, having received equal rights with Divine Revelation, first serves as the ground of religion, and subsequently replaces it.
Ivan Kireevskii

The exhaustion of faith

'My elder! Tell me sincerely, I bet of you in the name of God, tell me what you think of this: why did the evil spirits appear before the eyes of people in ancient times, as the sacred tradition tells us, and why do they no longer present themselves before our own eyes?'
Father Arseny glanced at me attentively and keenly. In his eyes, as I recall, the flame of a certain joyous faith was suddenly kindled, and after pondering for a while, he answered me thus:
'In those days all men, even the pagans, had a great deal of faith. Now men have become powerless, and faith is weakening. The earth itself is growing old, and men are growing senile in both spirit and flesh. With the exhaustion of men's strength, faith has also become exhausted. Now it is more profitable for the spirits of temptation not to be seen by us. They say to themselves, 'Things are well as they are!' Should a man of weak faith of a godless man see a demon before him and understand this, he would as a consequence begin to have a firmer faith in goodness.'
Konstantin Leontiev

The contradiction of deviation

… whenever the teaching of faith deviates even a little from its basic purity, the deviation, growing little by little, cannot help becoming a contradiction to faith. The lack of wholeness and inner unity of faith compels one to seek unity in abstract thinking; and reason, having received equal rights with Divine Revelation, first serves as the ground of religion, and subsequently replaces it.
Ivan Kireevskii

But one rung

The absolute atheist stands on the last rung but one before most absolute faith (whether he steps higher or not), while an indifferent man has no faith at all, nothing but dismal fear, and that, too, only occasionally, if he is a sensitive man.
Fr. Tikhon in Devils by FD

Church consciousness

If we see a decline of piety, a failure to understand the Divine services, the reason for this lies outside the Church: it is in the decline of faith in the masses, in the decline of morality, in the loss of church consciousness.
Fr. Michael Pomazansky

Middle without a beginning or end

The near-sighted philosophy of the previous century [i.e., the 18th] had for a time dreamt of breaking this holy union and had forced knowledge to dig a grave for faith, but what came of this attempt at matricide? Holy faith, honored by self-forgetting reason, is in a depth of the heart inaccessible to this reason, and false knowledge itself remained with its sophistries in the grave dug by it … True philosophy can exist only in a union with heaven, for true knowledge lives by and is nourished not by earth but by heaven … We are accustomed to saying the sphere of the sciences, the sphere of knowledge, and to separating it from the sphere of faith; but strictly speaking, there is no sphere of sciences and can be no such sphere. Rather, there exists only a boundless sphere of faith, whose inwardness is divided among the sciences. Knowledge without faith is a middle without a beginning or end; whoever seeks not soulless fragments but a living reasonably whole must therefore necessarily unite knowledge with faith …What in general is true knowledge, if not a natural daughter of faith? And what is true faith if not the natural end and crown of all grounded knowledge?
Archbishop of Kherson, Innokentii Borisov

Stay out of the dust...

For since what God giveth transcends reasoning entirely, it is but reason that we need faith. But the man that thinks meanly of it, and is contemptuous and vainglorious, will not effect anything at all. Let heretics hearken to the voice of the Spirit, for such is the nature of reasonings. They are like some labyrinth or puzzles which have no end to them anywhere, and do not let the reason stand upon the rock, and have their very origin in vanity. For being ashamed to allow of faith, and to seem ignorant of heavenly things, they involve themselves in the dust-cloud of countless reasonings.
St. John Chrysostom

That dang pernicious atheism

There are many kinds of atheism, but the worst is the so-called rational faith. It is the worst, for, besides the rejection of the object of faith ("things not seen" [Heb. 11:1]), it is hypocritical, accepts God but rejects His very essence, His "invisibility," i.e., His suprarationality.
St. Pavel (Florensky)

Objective science you say?

The near-sighted philosophy of the previous century [i.e., the 18th] had for a time dreamt of breaking this holy union and had forced knowledge to dig a grave for faith, but what came of this attempt at matricide? Holy faith, honored by self-forgetting reason, hid in a depth of the heart inaccessible to this reason, and false knowledge itself remained with its sophistries in the grave dug by it … True philosophy can exist only in a union with heaven, for true knowledge lives by and is nourished not by earth but by heaven … We are accustomed to saying the sphere of the sciences, the sphere of knowledge, and to separating it from the sphere of faith; but strictly speaking, there is no sphere of sciences and can be no such sphere. Rather, there exists only a boundless sphere of faith, whose inwardness is divided among the sciences. Knowledge without faith is a middle without a beginning or end; whoever seeks not soulless fragments but a living reasonably whole must therefore necessarily unite knowledge with faith …What in general is true knowledge, if not a natural daughter of faith? And what is true faith if not the natural end and crown of all grounded knowledge?
Archbishop of Kherson, Innokentii Borisov