#eastern

The Western poet and writer of romance has exactly the same kind of difficulty in comprehending Eastern subjects as you have in comprehending Western subjects. ↗

— Lafcadio Hearn

#difficulty #eastern #exactly #kind #poet

And thus to my final and most melancholy point: a great number of Stalin's enforcers and henchmen in Eastern Europe were Jews. And not just a great number, but a great proportion. The proportion was especially high in the secret police and 'security' departments, where no doubt revenge played its own part, as did the ideological attachment to Communism that was so strong among internationally minded Jews at that period: Jews like David Szmulevski. There were reasonably strong indigenous Communist forces in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, but in Hungary and Poland the Communists were a small minority and knew it, were dependent on the Red Army and aware of the fact, and were disproportionately Jewish and widely detested for that reason. Many of the penal labor camps constructed by the Nazis were later used as holding pens for German deportees by the Communists, and some of those who ran these grim places were Jewish. Nobody from Israel or the diaspora who goes to the East of Europe on a family-history fishing-trip should be unaware of the chance that they will find out both much less and much more than the package-tour had promised them. It's easy to say, with Albert Camus, 'neither victims nor executioners.' But real history is more pitiless even than you had been told it was. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#camus #communism #czechoslovakia #david-szmulevski #east-germany

If a great part comes up and the guy's meant to have an Eastern European accent, great; but if it's a bad part I won't take it. ↗

— Goran Visnjic

#bad #comes #eastern #european #great

A wide and vague impression exists that so-called Eastern religion is more contemplative, innocuous, and humane than the proselytizing monotheisms of the West. Don't believe a word of this: try asking the children of Indochina who were dumped by their parents for inherited deformities that were attributed to sins in a previous 'life. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#buddhism #eastern-religion #indochina #monotheism #rebirth-buddhism

The Lord does not require us to wear a [cassock] — He wants us to be good and kind. ↗

— Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

#eastern-orthodoxy #jesus-christ #kindness #monasticism #spirituality

Everything is defeated before love. ↗

— Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

#eastern-orthodoxy #inspirational #love #spirituality #inspirational

A sad man, is man with the lights turned off. ↗

— Arsenie Boca

#inspirational #spirituality #inspirational

God’s love for the biggest sinner is greater than the love of the holiest man for God ↗

— Arsenie Boca

#inspirational #saints #spirituality #inspirational

If you will have patience in difficulties you know the Holy Spirit is within you, if you will also have the strength to be thankful in troubles than is when the Holy Spirit shines through you. ↗

— Arsenie Boca

#holy-spirit #inspirational #spirituality #inspirational

Shortly afterwards my father told me that he might be going into the Eastern Zone of Germany. At that time my own mind was closer to his than it had ever been before, because he also believed that they are at least trying to build a new world. ↗

— Klaus Fuchs

#also #because #been #before #believed