... it is not only he who commits sin who is separated from God and becomes His enemy, but also he who loves it and covets something, or has an attachment in his heart to anything that is on earth. This constitutes friendship with the world (James 4:4). Thus is is clearly proven that, even if one is deprived of everything and commits no sin whatever in action, but merely likes it and favors it and, so to speak, is attached to it, he is an enemy of God. Thus John says, "If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him" (1 John 2:15). So the Lord Himself says, "You must love the Lord your God with all your mind and with all your strength and with all your soul" (Mk. 12:30). Therefore he who craves or has an attachment to anything else transgresses this commandment.
("Symeon the New Theologian: The Discourses", p. 111)
Those who are ailing do not know these things. Indeed, they do not even understand that they are sick. And who then can ever persuade with argument people thus inclined that they are under the sway of sickness and disease? They imagine rather that it is health to accomplish the wishes of the flesh, and to practise all its lust and desire. And, just as no one will ever make those who are gone mad and deranged take account of the fact that they are insane, just so neither will anyone persuade those who are wallowing in the passions, and ruled by them, and unconscious of their being possessed, that they are in a bad way, and so make them change for the better. For they are blind, and neither do they believe that anyone else can see. Thus they live, deprived of sight and unconvinced they can lift up their eyes.
("On the Mystical Life (Vol. 2)", p. 75)
For nothing else so soils the work of God and makes unclean what is clean as the deification of creation and the worshipping of it as equal to God the Creator and Maker. Thus all creation, defiled now and worshipped by man, is soiled and brought down to complete corruption.
("On the Mystical Life (Vol. 1)", p. 30)
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