It is impossible for a man to experience the sweetness of God as long as he is experiencing the sweetness of the world. But if, on the other hand, he taste the sweetness of God, he will hate the world.
— Unknown Desert Father
It is impossible for you to live a godly life if you are in love with pleasure and money.
— Isidore the Priest (a Desert Father)
Love for that which is earthly makes the soul empty, and then there she is sad, and grows wild, and does not want to pray to God. The enemy then, seeing that the soul is not in God, shakes her and freely places in the mind whatever he wants, and he drives the soul from one thought to another, and thus the whole day the soul remains in such disorder and cannot purely gaze at the Lord.
— Saint Silouan the Athonite (1866-1938)
Someone who is tied up cannot run. Just so, the spiritual intellect that is still a slave to its obsessive desires can never see the domain of spiritual prayer, because it is dragged all over the place by compulsive ideations and cannot achieve the necessary intellectual stillness.
–Evagrius Ponticus (345-399)
Our labor here is but brief, but the reward is eternal. Do not be disturbed by the clamor of the world, which passes like a shadow. Do not let the false delights of a deceptive world deceive you.
–Saint Clare of Assisi (1194-1253)
