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“...the human race has received the dignity of God's image at the beginning of creation, whereas the perfection of God's likeness is reserved for the end.”
― Origen, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary. Ancient Wisdom for Today's World (Cistercian Studies Series)

“I also ought to investigate my faculties. What are their movements, what is their function according to ghe divine plan? How does the intellect work? By what means does the soul lose its way and by what means does it return to the right road?”
― Niceta Stethatus, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary. Ancient Wisdom for Today's World (Cistercian Studies Series)

“...their spiritual reading of the Bible, a reading understood as a means to salvation, an initiation into the Light, an approach to communion with the Living One, teaches us to be on our guard against two dangers. On the one hand, to beware of the dryness of a certain biblical exegesis today which offers, or claims to offer, exactness at the expense of the living nature of the message. On the other, to beware of the subjectivism which merely comes down to a certain virtuosity in playing the strings off the human psyche, giving the believer the suggestion of 'doing the truth in love' without giving any love for the truth, still less the truth itself.”
― Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary. Ancient Wisdom for Today's World (Cistercian Studies Series)

“The first stage of this tranquility consists in silencing the lips when the heart is excited. The second, in silencing the mind when the soul is still excited. The goal is a perfect peacefulness even in the middle of a raging storm.”
― John Climacus, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary. Ancient Wisdom for Today's World (Cistercian Studies Series)