“Whoever hammers a lump of iron, first decides what he is going to make of it, a scythe, a sword, or an axe. Even so we ought to make up our minds what kind of virtue we want to forge or we labour in vain.”

The Living Testament: The Essential Writings of Christianity Since the Bible (1985), p. 66.
From St. Athanasius' Life of St. Antony

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Anthony the Great 7
Christian saint, monk, and hermit 251–357

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