"Avarice is said to be the root of all evil (1 Tim. 6:10), and it is so because it causes hatred, theft, envy, separation, hostility, stormy blasts, remembrance of past wrongs, inhuman acts and even murder. A small fire can burn down an entire forest. But one virtue can help many to escape all the [...]
"Join humility to temperance, for the one is useless without the other." Source: St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent
"To be chaste is to put on the nature of an incorporeal being. Chastity is a supernatural denial of what one is by nature, so that a mortal and corruptible body is competing in a truly marvelous way with incorporeal spirits. A chaste man is someone who has driven out bodily love by means of [...]
"Fasting ends lust, roots our bad thoughts, frees one from evil dreams. Fasting makes for purity of prayer, an enlightened soul, a watchful mind, a deliverance from blindness. Fasting is the door of compunction, humble sighing, joyful contrition, and end to chatter, an occasion for silence, a custodian of obedience, a lightening of sleep, health [...]
"Begrudge the stomach and your heart will be humbled; please the stomach and your mind will turn proud." Source: St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent
"Control your appetites before they control you, and shame will greatly help you to maintain such mastery… So let us restrain our appetites with the thought of the fire to come… For the truth is, as one will discover, that the belly is the cause of all human shipwreck." Source: St. John Climacus, The [...]
"Gluttony is hypocrisy of the stomach. Filled, it moans about scarcity; stuffed, and crammed, it wails about its hunger." Source: St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent
"Hypocrisy is the mother of lying and frequently its cause. Some would argue that hypocrisy is nothing other than a meditation on falsehood, that it is the inventor of falsehood laced with lies." Source: St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent
"The lover of silence draws close to God. He talks to Him in secret and God enlightens him. Jesus, by His silence, shamed Pilate; and a man, by his stillness, conquers vainglory. Peter wept bitterly for what he had said." Source: St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent
"Someone who had asked me once about stillness told me that talkativeness invariably results from one of the following causes: from a bad or relaxed life-style ('the tongue,' he said, 'is a member of the body, like the rest, and therefore needs to be trained in its habits'); or it comes from vainglory, a particular [...]