Source, in full

Wortley: Abba Isaac visited Abba Poemen and saw him pouring a little water over his feet. As he was quite familiar with him, he said to him: “How is it that some used severity and treated their bodies harshly?” Abba Poemen said to him: “We were not taught to slay the body but to slay the passions.”

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