{Let us} treasure up in our soul some of those things which are permanent..., not of those which will forsake us and be destroyed, and which only tickle our senses for a little while...
(Oration 41:1)
...earnestly cleaving unto God and outstripping transitory things, we press towards the life above, deserting the earth while we are still upon the earth, and earnestly following the spirit which bears us upward.
(Oration 7:20)
... I gave as an offering my all to Him Who had won me and saved me, my property, my fame, my health, my very words... {In considering all these things} I preferred Christ. And the words of God were made sweet as honeycombs to me, and I cried after knowledge and lifted up my voice for wisdom. There was moreover the moderation of anger, the curbing of the tongue, the restraint of the eyes, the discipline of the belly, and the trampling under foot of the glory which clings to the earth.
(Oration 2:77)
For nothing seemed to me so desirable as to close the doors of my senses, and, escaping from the flesh and the world, collected within myself, having no further connection than was absolutely necessary with human affairs, and speaking to myself and to God to live superior to visible things, ever preserving in myself the divine impressions pure and unmixed with the erring tokens of this lower world, and both being, and constantly growing more and more to be, a real unspotted mirror of God and divine things, as light is added to light (2 Cor. 3:18), and what was still dark grew clearer (1 Cor. 13:12), enjoying already by hope the blessings of the world to come... even now being above the earth by having forsaken it, and stationed on high by the Spirit.
(Oration 2:7)
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