Day by day I am more and more haunted by the remembrance of that world from which I fled.

I know that if I returned I should feel no pleasure in those pomps, which, even while I battened on them, I despised.

Can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing women; or discern any longer what I eat or what I drink?
And yet--the palaces of those seven hills, their statesmen and their generals, their intrigues, their falls, and their triumphs--for they might rise and conquer yet!--for no moment are they out of my imagination,-no moment in which they are not tempting me back to them, like a moth to the candle which has already scorched him, with a dreadful spell, which I must at last obey, wretch that I am, against my own will, or break by fleeing into some outer desert, from whence return will be impossible!' Pambo smiled.
'Again, I say, this is the worldly-wise man, the searcher of hearts! And he would fain flee from the little Laura, which does turn his thoughts at times from such vain dreams, to a solitude where he will be utterly unable to escape those dreams.

Well, friend!--and what if thou art troubled at times by anxieties and schemes for this brother and for that?
Better to be anxious for others than only for thyself.

Better to have something to love--even something to weep over--than to become in some lonely cavern thine own world,--perhaps, as more than one whom I have known, thine own God.' 'Do you know what you are saying ?' asked Arsenius in a startled tone.
'I say, that by fleeing into solitude a man cuts himself off from all which makes a Christian man; from law, obedience, fellow-help, self-sacrifice--from the communion of saints itself.' 'How then ?' 'How canst thou hold communion with those toward whom thou canst show no love?
And how canst thou show thy love but by works of love ?' 'I can, at least, pray day and night for all mankind.