Evagrius Ponticus Quotes

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

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

120. Happy is the spirit that attains to complete unconsciousness of all sensible experience at the time of prayer.

37. First of all pray to be purified from your passions. Secondly, pray to be delivered from ignorance. Thirdly, pray to be freed from all temptation and abandonment.

121. Happy is the man who thinks himself no better than dirt.

123. Happy is the monk who considers all men as god — after God.

60. If you are a theologian, you truly pray. If you truly pray, you are a theologian.

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

Do not desire wealth for giving to the poor.

3. Prayer is a continual intercourse of the spirit with God. What state of soul then is required that the spirit might thus strain after its Master without wavering, living constantly with him without intermediary?

81. Agape is the progeny of apatheia. Apatheia is the very flower of ascesis. Ascesis consists in keeping the commandments. The custodian of those commandments is the fear of God which is in turn the offspring of true faith. Now faith is an interior an interior good, one which is to be found even in those who do not yet believe in God.

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

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

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.

34. The mind is the temple of the Holy Trinity.