Gregory of Nyssa

As virtue is a thing that has no master, that is, is free, everything that is free will be united with virtue.

— Gregory of Nyssa

[E]very concept that comes from some comprehensible image, by an approximate understanding and by guessing at the Divine nature, constitutes a idol of God and does not proclaim God.

— Gregory of Nyssa

Our Lord says, to those who can hear what Wisdom speaks beneath a mystery, that "the Kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21). That word points out the fact that the Divine good is not something apart from our nature, and is not removed far away from those who have the will to seek it; it is in fact within each of us, ignored indeed, and unnoticed while it is stifled beneath the cares and pleasures of life, but found again whenever we can turn our power of conscious thinking towards it.

— Gregory of Nyssa

Is it not want of reason in any one to suppose that when he has striven successfully to escape the dominion of one particular passion, he will find virtue in its opposite?

— Gregory of Nyssa

The love of gain, which is a large, incalculably large, element in every soul, when once applied to the desire for God, will bless the man who has it.

— Gregory of Nyssa

Slaves who have been freed and cease to serve their former masters, the very moment they become their own masters, direct all their thoughts towards themselves so, I take it, the soul which has been freed from ministering to the body becomes at once cognizant of its own inherent energy.

— Gregory of Nyssa

As, when one torch has been fired, flame is transmitted to all the neighbouring candlesticks, without either the first light being lessened or blazing with unequal brilliance on the other points where it has been caught; so the saintliness of a life is transmitted from him who has achieved it, to those who come within his circle.

— Gregory of Nyssa

Now that all the distractions of the material life had been removed, Macrina persuaded her mother to give up her ordinary life and all showy style of living and the services of domestics to which she had been accustomed before, and bring her point of view down to that of the masses, and to share the life of the maids, treating all her slave girls as if they were sisters and belonged to the same rank as herself.

— Gregory of Nyssa

My hope is that by the right process of inquiry and discernment, once the text has been cleansed of its obvious literal sense by undefiled thoughts, the philosophy hidden in the words may be brought to light.

— Gregory of Nyssa