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"A battle with evil in my own soul" is a true Christian's fundamental motto, and it is the one true principle, the one sound and reliable foundation on which one can build the well-being of humanity. Neither mutual persecution nor oppression for different political convictions, nor the brutal annihilation of dissenting individuals with which modern leaders are occupied, but the destruction of evil in one's own soul is that which is necessary. This is the only way to avoid the terrible abyss of destruction into which humanity is on the verge of careening.

- Archbishop Averky, The Struggle for Virtue, pp. 111-112

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This, my beloved adversary (and yet not mine), the flesh, was called death by Paul: Who, says he, will deliver me from the body of this death? (Rom 7:24.) And another theologian calls is a passionate, slavish, and nocturnal enemy. I used to long to know why it was given such names. If the flesh, as was said above, is death, whoever has conquered it undoubtedly does not die. But who is the man that shall live and not see the death of the impurity of his flesh?

+ St John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 15: On Purity and Chastity