Exercise patience out of love for your fellow man. Exercise patience in order to benefit your soul. For if you do not take your soul into consideration, you lose your patience.
Go, sell all that belongs to you and give it to the poor and taking up the cross, deny yourself; in this way you will be able to pray without distraction.
I shall indicate to you the most direct and simple method to acquire the habit of silence: ...reflect as often as you can on the pernicious results of indiscriminate babbling and on the salutary results of wise silence. When you come to taste the good fruit of silence, you will no longer need lessons about it.
If you love to enjoy true and complete delight from the Scriptures, seek to read them not merely with simple understanding, but with deeds and practical realities. Moreover, seek to read them not merely for the mere love of learning but also for the sake of ascetic endeavors & discipline, as St. Mark wrote: 'Read the words of Holy Scripture with an eye to practical applications and not merely to be puffed up by any fine thought that you may receive from it.' Another Father said: 'This is why the lover of knowledge must also be a lover of discipline. For knowledge alone does not give light to a lamp.'
Patience adorns the soul with diamonds which are not of the earth but belong to the Jerusalem that is above. Patience is a sweet word. Patience is a sweet breath. Patience is an invincible weapon. Patience is a priceless adornment of man. Patience is a blessing of God.
At the Lord's table we do not commemorate martyrs in the same way that we do others who rest in peace so as to pray for them, but rather that they may pray for us that we may follow in their footsteps.
Go, sell all that belongs to you and give it to the poor and taking up the cross, deny yourself; in this way you will be able to pray without distraction.
When anyone is disturbed or saddened under the pretext of a good and soul-profiting matter, and is angered against his neighbor, it is evident that this is not according to God: for everything that is of God is peaceful and useful and leads a man to humility and to judging himself.
Patience reigns quietly and fruitfully in the life of the man who does not harm or endanger anyone, who is content with little and is obedient to the commandments of the Heavenly Father.
Pray firstly to be purified of passions, secondly to be freed from ignorance and forgetfulness, and thirdly to be delivered from all temptation and forsaking.
