Evagrius Ponticus Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

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

Evagrius Ponticus
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].

Evagrius Ponticus
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.

Evagrius Ponticus
Do you wish to pray? Renounce all things. You then will become heir to all.

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

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

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

Evagrius Ponticus
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.

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

Evagrius Ponticus
Let me repeat this saying of mine that I once expressed on some other occasions: Happy is the spirit that attains to the perfect formlessness at the time of prayer.

Evagrius Ponticus
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.'"

Evagrius Ponticus
Happy is the spirit that becomes free of all matter and is stripped of all at the time of prayer.

Evagrius Ponticus
The proof of apatheia [peacefulness of soul] is had when the spirit begins to see its own light, when it remains in a state of tranquility in the presence of the images it has during sleep and when it maintains its calm as it beholds the affairs of life.

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

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

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

Evagrius Ponticus
You will not be able to pray purely if you are all involved with material affairs and agitated with unremitting concerns. For prayer is the rejection of conceptions.

Evagrius Ponticus
A monk is a man who considers himself one with all men because he seems constantly to see himself in every man.

Evagrius Ponticus