In Scetis a brother went to Moses to ask for advice. He said to him, 'Go and sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything'.
A hermit was asked, 'How is it that some struggle in their religious life, but do not receive grace like our predecessors?' He replied, 'Because then love was the rule, and each one drew his neighbour upward. Now love is growing cold, and each of us draws his neighbour downward, and so we do not deserve grace'.
Hilarion once came from Palestine to Antony on the mountain: and Antony said to him, 'Welcome, morning star, for you rise at break of day'. Hilarion said, 'Peace be unto you, pillar of light, for you sustain the world'.
The hermits said, 'If an angel really appears to you, do not accept it as a matter of course, but humble yourself, and say, 'I live in my sins and am not worthy to see an angel'.
Hyperchius said, 'The tree of life is high, and humility climbs it'.
[Poemen] said, 'A brother asked Alonius, "What is humility?" The hermit said, 'To be lower than brute beasts and to know that they are not condemned'.
[Poemen] said, 'Humility is the ground on which the Lord ordered the sacrifice to be offered'.
Mathois said, 'The nearer a man comes to God, the more he sees himself to be a sinner. Isaiah the prophet saw the Lord and knew himself to be wretched and unclean'.
Theophilus of holy memory, the bishop of Alexandria, once went to the mount of Nitria, and a hermit of Nitria came to see him. The bishop asked, 'What have you discovered in your life, abba?' The hermit answered, 'To blame myself unceasingly'. The bishop said, 'That is the only way to follow'.
... Zacharias took his cowl from his head, and put it beneath his feet and stamped on it, and said, 'Unless a man stamps upon self like that, he cannot be a monk'.
Evagrius said, 'To go against self is the beginning of salvation'.
They used to say of Arsenius that no one could understand the depths of his monastic life. [...]
[Antony] said, 'I saw the devil's snares set all over the earth, and I groaned and said, "What can pass through them?" I heard a voice saying, "Humility".'
[Allois] said, 'Until you can say in your heart, "Only I and God are in the world", you will not be at peace'.
[Allois] said, 'If you really want to, by the evening of one day you can reach a measure of godliness'.
A hermit said, 'Anyone who wants to live in the desert ought to be a teacher and not a learner. If he still needs teaching, he will come to harm'.
Hyperichius said, 'He who teaches others by his life and not his speech is truly wise'.
A brother sinned and the presbyter ordered him to go out of church. But Bessarion got up and went out with him, saying, 'I, too, am a sinner'.
A hermit said, 'When you flee from the company of other people, or when you despise the world and worldlings, take care to do so as if it were you who was being idiotic'.
A hermit said, 'The monk's cell is the furnace in Babylon in which the three children found the Son of God. It is the pillar of cloud out of which God spoke to Moses'.
Poemen said, 'The character of the genuine monk only appears when he is tempted'.
They said of Helladius that he lived twenty years in his cell, and did not once raise his eyes to look at the roof.
A hermit saw someone laughing, and said to him 'We have to render an account of our whole life before heaven and death, and you can laugh?'
A hermit said, 'As the shadow goes everywhere with the body, so we ought to carry penitence and weeping with us everywhere we go'.
A brother asked a hermit, 'I hear the hermits weeping, and my soul longs for tears, but they do not come, and I am worried about it'. He replied, 'The children of Israel entered the promised land after forty years in the wilderness. Tears are the promised land. When you reach them you will no longer be afraid of the conflict. For it is the will of God that we should be afflicted, so we may always be longing to enter that country'.
In Egypt once when Poemen was going somewhere he saw a woman sitting by a gravfe and weeping bitterly. He said, 'If all the delights of this world should come to her, they would not bring her out of sorrow. Just so should the monk always be weeping in his heart'.
A hermit, who had an experienced disciple, once turned him out in a fit of irritation. The disciple sat down outside to wait and the hermit found him there where he opened the door. So he did penance to him, saying, 'You are my abba now, because your humility and patience have overcome my weakness. Come inside, now you are the old abba, and I am the young disciple; my age must give way to your conduct'.
From The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks