Antonine Koval

“How good it is when you have roast meat or suchlike foods before you, to impress on your mind that this is the dead body of a fish, this is the dead body of a bird or pig; and again, that the Falernian wine is the mere juice of grapes, and your purple edged robe simply the hair of a sheep soaked in shell-fish blood!
And in sexual intercourse that it is no more than the friction of a membrane and a spurt of mucus ejected.
How good these perceptions are at getting to the heart of the real thing and penetrating through it, so you can see it for what it is!
This should be your practice throughout all your life: when things have such a plausible appearance, show them naked, see their shoddiness, strip away their own boastful account of themselves.
Vanity is the greatest seducer of reason: when you are most convinced that your work is important, that is when you are most under its spell.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“I came to realize we are held in the arms of God and are utterly completely safe - in life and in death; whether walking alone or with others.”
― Edie Littlefield Sundby, The Mission Walker: I was given three months to live...

“Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds; it stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet. I hear you say, "How unlucky that this should happen to me!" Not at all! Say instead, "How lucky that I am not broken by what has happened and am not afraid of what is about to happen. The same blow might have struck anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation or complaint.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“A long walk is a slow remembering of how profound and wonderful life is; God is everywhere and in everything. Wherever I look I am looking at God.”
― Edie Littlefield Sundby, The Mission Walker: I was given three months to live...