“My wisdom is as spurned as chaos. What is my nothingness, compared to the amazement that awaits you?”

“What is my nothingness to the stupor that awaits you?”

“Go back to the abyss! Fall into nothingness that awaits you and your master!”

“It is this nothingness (in solitude) that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. The task is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors get tired of pounding on my door and leave me alone. The wisdom of the desert is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Afflictions are light when compared with what we really deserve. They are light when compared with the sufferings of the Lord Jesus. But perhaps their real lightness is best seen by comparing them with the weight of glory which is awaiting us.”

“Man is perishing. That may be, and if it is nothingness that awaits us let us so act that it will be an unjust fate.”