11 Quotes by Ilias the Presbyter

When you free your intellect from self-indulgence in the body, in food and possessions, then whatever you do will be regarded by God as a pure offering. In exchange, the eyes of your heart will be opened, and you will be able clearly to meditate on the divine principles inscribed within it; and their sweetness to your spiritual taste will be greater than that of honey.

Many may be stripped of the coat of self-love, but few of the coat of worldly display; while only the dispassionate are free from self-esteem, the last coat of all.

Do not be angry with a person who unwittingly operates on you like a surgeon. Look rather at the abomination he has removed and, blaming yourself, bless him because through God's grace he has been of such service to you.

Few are circumspect with regard to what is according to nature, but many with regard to what is contrary to nature. For having expended out of fear all their intrinsic quota of circumspection on what is contrary to nature, they have little left to exercise with regard to what is according to nature. Indeed, they expend most of it on superfluous things and what is by nature worthless.

When it has rejected evil, let the soul still engaged in ascetic struggle repeat the words of the Song to the malicious demons and thoughts that forcibly try to turn its attention once more to vanities and delusion: 'I have taken off my coat; how can I put it on again? I have washed my feet; how can I make them dirty?' (Song of Songs 5:3).

The virtuous may appear to be bad, but essentially they are good; superficially the self-important and pleasure-loving may appear to be good, but basically they are evil.

Suffering deliberately embraced cannot free the soul totally from sin unless the soul is also tried in the fire of suffering that comes unchosen. For the soul is like a sword: if it does not go 'through fire and water' (Ps. 66:12. LXX) - that is, through suffering deliberately embraced and suffering that comes unchosen - it cannot but be shattered by the blows of fortune.

Do not fetter yourself to a small thing and you will not be enslaved to a greater one. For the greater evil is built up only on the basis of the smaller.

Mercy and truth precede all the other virtues. They in their turn produce humility and so discrimination; for, according to the fathers, discrimination comes from humility. Without discrimination, neither practice nor spiritual knowledge can fulfill its purpose. For practice uncontrolled by such knowledge strays here and there aimlessly, like a calf; while knowledge that refuses to clothe itself in the honorable vesture of practice lacks nobility, however much it may pretend to possess it.