Sayings of the Holy Fathers:

Spiritual and physical passions. The following are spiritual passions: forgetting God, laziness and ignorance (of the Christian faith). These three passions obscure the spiritual eye — reason, and the person succumbs to the rule of other passions, namely: impiety, heresy, blasphemy, irritability, anger, sorrow, irascibility, hatred, maliciousness, slander, judging others, illogical sorrow, fear, dissension, jealousy, envy, vainglory, hypocrisy, lies, unbelief, foolishness, indiscrimination, short-sightedness, insatiability, love of acquiring things, laziness, passion for the earthly things, depression, faintheartedness, ingratitude, grumbling, presumptuousness, conceit, vehemence, haughtiness, love of power, flattery, slyness, shamelessness, indifference, effeminacy, dissimulation, mockery, two-facedness, assenting to sin, continuous thoughts of sin, meandering thoughts, self-love (mother of everything evil), love of money (root of all iniquities and passions), evil nature and deceit.

St. Ephraim of Syria

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Everyone wanting to understand God’s will must first deaden the personal will within oneself. Having prayed to God with faith and simplicity, they must inquire of the fathers and brothers with a humble heart and without any doubts in their minds. And they should accept their advices as though they came from God’s lips, even though it might go against their own understanding of the matter. Those who are guided by this precept are fully humble and God does not allow them to be deceived.

St. John Climacus

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Do not pray so that everything will be according to your wishes, because it may not always conform to God’s will — but better pray "Thy will be done," and in every matter, pray this way because He always wants everything good and beneficial for your soul. Instead of letting God to arrange things that are best for me, I sometimes unwisely forced God’s will through my prayers, asking Him for one thing or another. Later, upon receiving what I had asked for, I was left lamenting because things were not what I thought they would be.

St. Nilus of Sinai