do not let yourself be overcome by destructive forgetfulness or by the laziness which paralyzes the intellect and turns it away from life; do not allow ignorance, the cause of all evils, to darken your thinking; do not be lured by the corrosive vice of negligence; do not be seduced by sensual pleasure or defeated by gluttony; do not let your intellect be taken prisoner by lust through assenting to sexual thoughts, defiling yourself inwardly; do not be overcome by the anger which causes you to hate your brother and for some pathetic reason to inflict and suffer pain, leading you to store up malicious thoughts against your neighbor and to turn away from pure prayer. anger enslaves the intellect, and makes you regard your brother with bestial cruelty; it fetters the conscience with uncontrolled impulses of the flesh, and surrenders you for a time to be chastised by the evil spirits to whom you have yielded.
-st. mark the ascetic
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