Evagrius Ponticus Quotes

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

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

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

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

5. Pray first for the gift of tears so that by means of sorrow you may soften your native rudeness. Then having confessed your sins to the Lord you will obtain pardon for them.

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.

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

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

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

97. One of the brethren owned only a book of the Gospels. He sold this and gave the money for the support of the poor. He made a statement that deserves remembrance: "I have sold the very word that speaks to me saying: 'Sell your possessions and give to the poor.'"

Blessed is the one who has reached the knowledge that cannot be abolished (beyond what cannot be, it cannot be gone).

153. When you give yourself to prayer, rise above every other joy — then you will find true prayer.

52. To separate the body from the soul is the privilege of only of the One who has joined them together. But to separate the soul from the body lies as well in the power of the man who pursues virtue. For our Fathers gave to the meditation of death and to the flight from the body a spiritual name: anachoresis [withdrawal].

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

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.