"'I have not yet become a monk myself, but I have seen monks.'"

     Collection systématique XX.4 (SC 498, pp. 164, 166) = Abba Macarius the Great 2 (PG 65, cols. 260-261).  The desert Christian:  sayings of the Desert Fathers:  the alphabetical collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York, NY:  Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975), 125-126.

Don't try this at home

Source

"One of the Fathers related of Abba Sisoes of Calamon that, wishing to overcome sleep one day, he hung himself over the precipice of Petra.  An angel came to take him down and ordered him not to do that again and not to transmit such teaching to others."

     Abba Sisoes 33 (PG 65, col. 403/404).  This one doesn't appear in the Collection systématique (SC 387, 474, and 498), or, at least, not in the Concordance (SC 498, pp. 217 ff.) under Sisoès.  The desert Christian:  sayings of the Desert Fathers:  the alphabetical collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York, NY:  Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975), 219.

Vetus Testamentum in Novo

"A brother asked Abba Sisoes the Theban, 'Give me a word,' and he said, 'What shall I say to you?  I read the New Testament, and I turn to the Old.'"

Abba Sisoes 35 (PG 65, col. 404).  This one doesn't appear in the Collection systématique (SC 387, 474, and 498), or, at least, not in the Concordance (SC 498, pp. 217 ff.) under Sisoès.  The desert Christian:  sayings of the Desert Fathers:  the alphabetical collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York, NY:  Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975), 219 (ἀναγινώσκω, ἀνακάμπτω).

Mary needs Martha

"A brother went to see Abba Silvanus on the mountain of Sinai.  When he saw the brothers working hard he said to the old man, 'Do not labour for the food which perishes. (John 6.27)  Mary has chosen the good portion.' (Luke 10.42)  The old man said to his disciple, 'Zacharias, give the brother a book and put him in a cell without anything else.'  So when the ninth hour came the visitor watched the door expecting someone would be sent to call him to the meal.  When no-one called him he got up, went to find the old man and said to him, 'Have the brothers not eaten today?'  The old man replied that they had.  Then he said, 'Why did you not call me?'  The old man said to him, 'Because you are a spiritual man and do not need that kind of food.  We, being carnal, want to eat, and that is why we work.  But you have chosen the good portion and read the whole day long and you do not want to eat carnal food.'  When he heard these words the brother made a prostration saying, 'Forgive me, abba.'  The old man said to him, 'Mary needs Martha.  It is really thanks to Martha that Mary is praised.'"

Collection systématique X.99 (SC 474, p. 78) = Abba Silvanus 5 (PG 65, col. 409/410).  The desert Christian:  sayings of the Desert Fathers:  the alphabetical collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York, NY:  Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975), 223.

"We know that the old man does not suffer harm from them but we. . . ."

"One day Abba Sisoes left Abba Anthony's mountain to go to the outer mountain of the Thebaid and there he stayed.  Now there were some Meletians there who lived at Calamon of Arsinoe.  Hearing that the old man had come to the outer mountain, some people wished to see him but they said, 'What shall we do because the Meletians are on the mountain.  We know that the old man does not suffer harm from them but we are afraid lest, in wanting to meet the old man, we fall into the temptation of the heretics [(πειροσμὸν τῶν αἱρετικῶν)].'  So as not to meet the heretics, they did not go to see the old man."

Abba Sisoes 48 (PG 65, col. 405/406).  This one doesn't appear in the Collection systématique (SC 387, 474, and 498), or, at least, not in the Concordance (SC 498, pp. 217 ff.) under Sisoès.  The desert Christian: sayings of the Desert Fathers: the alphabetical collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York, NY:  Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975), 221, italics mine.  (The Melitians were more schismatics than heretics, however.)

Weil on the hammer-and-nail of affliction

"When we hit a nail with a hammer, the whole of the shock received by the large head of the nail passes into the point without any of it being lost, although it is only a point. . . .
"Extreme affliction, which means physical pain, distress of soul and social degradation, all at the same time, constitutes the nail.  The point is applied at the very centre of the soul.  The head of the nail is all the necessity which spreads throughout the totality of space and time.
"Affliction is a marvel of divine technique.  It is a simple and ingenious device which introduces into the soul of a finite creature the immensity of force, blind, brutal and cold.  The infinite distance which separates God from the creature is entirely concentrated into one point to pierce the soul in its centre.
"The man to whom such a thing happens has no part in the operation.  He struggles like a butterfly which is pinned alive into an album.  But through all the horror he can continue to want to love.  There is nothing impossible in that, no obstacle, one might almost say no difficulty.  For the greatest suffering, so long as it does not cause fainting, does not touch the part of the soul which consents to a right direction.
"It is only necessary to know that love is a direction and not a state of the soul.  If one is unaware of this, one falls into despair at the first onslaught of affliction.
"He whose soul remains ever turned in the direction of God while the nail [of affliction] pierces it, finds himself nailed onto the very centre of the universe.  It is the true centre, it is not in the middle, it is beyond space and time, it is God.  In a dimension which does not belong to space, which is not time, which is indeed quite a different dimension, this nail has pierced a hole through all creation, through the thickness of the screen which separates the soul from God.
"In this marvellous dimension, the soul, without leaving the place and the instant where the body to which it is united is situated, can cross the totality of space and time and come into the very presence of God."

Simone Weil, "The love of God and affliction" (1942), in Waiting on God, trans. Emma Craufurd (London:  Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1951), 78 (63-78) = "L'amour de Dieu et le malheur," in Attente de Dieu, ed. Joseph-Marie Perrin (Paris:  La Colombe, 1950), and Pensées sans ordre concernant l'amour de Dieu (Paris:  Gallimard, 1962), 104-105 (85-105).  I quote this knowing full well that I am among those who haven't known even pain (douleur) and suffering (souffrance), let alone affliction (malheur):  "those who have never had contact with affliction in its true sense can have no idea of what it is, even though they may have suffered a great deal."  For this reason, "compassion for the afflicted is an impossibility.  When it is really found we have a more astounding miracle than walking on water, healing the sick, or even raising the dead" (65).  Indeed, "Except for those whose whole soul is inhabited by Christ, everybody despises the afflicted to some extent" (67, italics mine).

Carey on "Alexis de Tocqueville's prescient Democracy in America"

"I dedicate this account of our lives and travels to Olivier-Jean-Baptiste de Clarel de Garmont in pretty much the same spirit that his mother, or more likely the Abbé de La Londe, offered him comfort during the fearful nights of his childhood.  To him I say, in the fullness of my heart, sir, your fears are phantoms.

     "Look, it is daylight.  There are no sansculottes, nor will there ever be again.  There is no tyranny in America, nor ever could be.  Your horrid visions concerning fur traders are groundless.  The great ignoramus will not be elected.  The illiterate will never rule.  Your bleak certainty that there can be no art in a democracy is unsupported by the truth.

     "You are wrong, dear sir, and the proof that you are wrong is here, in my jumbled life, for I was your servant and became your friend.  I was your employee and am now truly your progenitor, by which I mean that you were honestly made in new york by a footman and a rogue.  I mean that all these words, these blemishes and tears, this darkness, this unreliable history—although written pretty much as well as could be done in London—was cobbled together by me, jumped-up John Larrit, at Harlem Heights, and given to our compositor on May 10, 1837."

     Parrot (Perroquet), in his Dedication to Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America (New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 381.  As for any irony, or at least studied ambiguity, "This novel began when I read Alexis de Tocqueville's prescient Democracy in America" (Acknowledgements, [383]).