The man of half-grown intelligence, when he observes an object which is bathed in the glow of a seeming beauty, thinks that that object is in its ess… - Gregory of Nyssa

Is it not want of reason in any one to suppose that when he has striven successfully to escape the dominion of one particular passion, he will find virtue in its opposite?

Now that all the distractions of the material life had been removed, Macrina persuaded her mother to give up her ordinary life and all showy style of living and the services of domestics to which she had been accustomed before, and bring her point of view down to that of the masses, and to share the life of the maids, treating all her slave girls as if they were sisters and belonged to the same rank as herself.

Paul ... calls the process of shifting away from material matters and toward spiritual matters a “turning to the Lord” and “taking away of a veil.” In all the different tropes and terms for the theoria-meaning, Paul instructs us in a single form of teaching: it is not necessary always to remain in the letter, on the grounds that the immediately apparent meaning of the things said in many instances causes us harm in the pursuit of the life of virtue. But it is necessary to pass over to the incorporeal and spiritually intelligible reading with insight, with the result that the more corporeal meanings are converted to an intellectual sense and meaning, in the same way that the dust of the more fleshly significance of what is said is “shaken off.” This is why Paul says, “the letter kills, but the spirit gives life,” since oftentimes with biblical narrative, it will not provide us with examples of a good life if we stop short at the simple events.