Skip to content

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.

— Evagrius Ponticus

Another quote →

Topics

Prayer

More quotes by Evagrius Ponticus

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

Do not desire wealth for giving to the poor.

First pray for the gift of tears, so that through sorrowing you may tame what is savage in your soul. And having confessed your transgressions to the Lord, you will obtain forgiveness from Him.

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

Just as it is possible to think of water both while thirsty and while not thirsty, so it is possible to think of gold with greed and without greed. The same applies to other things.

All Evagrius Ponticus quotes →

You may also like

When the mind is not dissipated upon extraneous things, nor diffused over the world about us through the senses, it withdraws within itself, and of its own accord ascends to the contemplation of God.

Basil of Caesarea

Oh dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside.

Plato

To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! … that is what I call prayer.

Claude Debussy Claude Debussy: His Life and Works (1933)

"O God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small."

John F. Kennedy

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Evagrius Ponticus (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.