SO GOOD QUOTES

And because they were not refined in their bodies, but in their souls, they chose vegetable food that their bodies might become meagre, and the strength and the natural power of their members might be reduced, and that after these things the living parts of the soul might be revealed unto the perception and sight of divine knowledge. And this actually took place, for after they had eaten pulse and drunk water for three years this knowledge was revealed unto them, not that which is born of words, but that which is born of deeds, for they were doing the works which gave birth unto the knowledge of the spirit, while they were learning the words which gave birth unto human knowledge; but because their expectation was directed unto the revelation of that knowledge which ariseth from works and not unto that which ariseth from words, where they looked they saw, and where they expected they received, and they became a medium for words, and receptive vessels of the knowledge of the spirit. 

—Philoxenus, Ascetic Discourses (1894) pp.403-471. Discourse 11 — On Abstinence