Evagrius Ponticus Quotes
345–399 Greece
Evagrius Ponticus (345–399 AD) was a Christian monk and ascetic.
Also known as: Evagrius of Pontus, Evagrios, Evagrios the Solitary, Kephalaia Gnostika
Random Evagrius Ponticus quote
42 quotes
124. A monk is a man who is separated from all and who is in harmony with all.
121. Happy is the man who thinks himself no better than dirt.
35. Prayer is an ascent of the spirit to God.
150. Just as sight is the most worthy of the sense, so also is prayer the most divine of the virtues.
113. By true prayer a monk becomes another angel, for he ardently longs to see the face of the Father in heaven.
65. If you long to pray, then avoid all that is opposed to prayer. Then when God draws near, he has only to go along with you.
6. Pray with tears and your request will find a hearing. Nothing so gratifies the Lord as supplication offered in the midst of tears.
34. The mind is the temple of the Holy Trinity.
117. 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.
60. If you are a theologian, you truly pray. If you truly pray, you are a theologian.
86. Knowledge! The great possession of man. It is a fellow-worker with prayer, acting to awaken the power of thought to contemplate the divine knowledge.
70. 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 concepts.
83. The singing of Psalms quiets the passions and calms the intemperance of the body. Prayer, on the other hand, prepares the spirit to put its own powers into operation.
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.
6. The pure mind is an incense burner at the time of prayer when it touches upon no sensible object. According to virtue we will be one on the eighth day; according to knowledge, on the last day.
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?
36. Do you long to pray? Renounce all things. You then will become heir to all.
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.
Do you desire, then, to embrace this life of solitude, and to seek out the blessings of stillness? If so, abandon the cares of the world, and the principalities and powers that lie behind them: free yourself from attachment to material things, from domination by passions and desires, so that as a stranger to all this you may attain true stillness.
52. The state of prayer can be aptly described as a habitual state of imperturbable calm. It snatches to the heights of intelligible reality the spirit which loves wisdom and which is truly spiritualized by the most intense love.