When the door of the steam baths is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good.
Thereafter the intellect, though lacking appropriate ideas, pours out a welter of confused thoughts to anyone it meets, as it no longer has the Holy Spirit to keep its understanding free from fantasy. Ideas of value always shun verbosity, being foreign to confusion and fantasy.
Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts.
– St. Diadochos of Photiki, “On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination.” Philokalia, Vol. 1
Featured image: Nun in cemetery, c. 1980s. Photographer Maryna Yurchenko. source
