Evagrius Ponticus Quotes

In the whole range of evil thoughts, none is richer in resources than self-esteem.

36. Do you long to pray? Renounce all things. You then will become heir to all.

122. Happy is the monk who views the welfare and progress of all men with as much joy as if it were his own.

114. Do not by any means strive to fashion some image or visualize some form at the time of prayer.

65. If you long to pray, then avoid all that is opposed to prayer. Then when God draws near, he has only to go along with you.

35. Prayer is an ascent of the spirit to God.

85. Psalm-singing is an image of wisdom which is many-sided; prayer is the prelude to immaterial and uniform knowledge.

150. Just as sight is the most worthy of the sense, so also is prayer the most divine of the virtues.

124. A monk is a man who is separated from all and who is in harmony with all.

4. The state of the mind is an intelligible height resembling the colour of heaven, to which the light of the Holy Trinity comes in the time of prayer.

118. Happy is the spirit which, praying with distraction, goes on increasing its desire for God.

2. If someone should want to behold the state of his mind, let him deprive himself of all mental representations, and then he shall behold himself resembling sapphire or the colour of heaven. It is impossible to accomplish this without impassibility, for he will need God to collaborate with him and breathe into him the connatural light.

23. The mind cannot see the place of God within itself, unless it has transcended all the mental representations associated with objects. Nor will it transcend them, if it has not put off the passions that bind it to sensible objects through mental representations. And it will lay aside the passions through the virtues, and simple thoughts through spiritual contemplation; and this in turn it will lay aside when there appears to it the light.

86. Knowledge! The great possession of man. It is a fellow-worker with prayer, acting to awaken the power of thought to contemplate the divine knowledge.

52. The state of prayer can be aptly described as a habitual state of imperturbable calm. It snatches to the heights of intelligible reality the spirit which loves wisdom and which is truly spiritualized by the most intense love.