Top 13 Quotes & Sayings by Kallistos Ware

Jesus condemned no one except hypocrites.

Fr. Amphilochios, the geronta or elder on the island of Patmos when I first stayed there, would have been in full agreement. Do you know, he said, that God gave us one more commandment, which is not recorded in Scripture? It is the commandment love the trees. Whoever does not love trees, so he believed, does not love God. When you plant a tree, he insisted, you plant hope, you plant peace, you plant love, and you will receive God's blessing.

The culture and educational system of the contemporary West are based almost exclusively upon the training of the reasoning brain and, to a lesser degree, of the aesthetic emotions. Most of us have forgotten that we are not only brain and will, senses and feelings; we are also spirit. Modern man has for the most part lost touch with the truest and highest aspect of himself; and the result of this inward alienation can be seen all too plainly in his restlessness, his lack of identity and his loss of hope.

The isolated individual is not a real person. A real person is one who lives in and for others. And the more personal relationships we form with others, the more we truly realize ourselves as persons. It has even been said that there can be no true person unless there are two, entering into communication with one another.

It is only through thanksgiving that I can become myself.

As Christians we are here to affirm the supreme value of direct sharing, of immediate encounter -not machine to machine, but person to person, face to face.

The circle of divine love has not remained closed.

We see that it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.

The entire cosmos is one vast burning bush, permeated by the fire of the divine power and glory

The doors of Hell, insofar as they have locks, have locks on the inside.

We are on a journey through the inward space of the heart, a journey not measured by the hours of our watch or the days of the calendar; for it is a journey out of time into eternity.

We become truly personal by loving God and by loving other humans... In its deepest sense, love is the life, the energy, of the Creator in us.

Faith is not the supposition that something might be true, but the assurance that someone is there.