dost not keep the word of the Gospel which commanded men not to care for the morrow?” The old man said unto them, “What is your custom?” And they said unto him, “We work day by day with our hands, and we sell [what we make], and buy food for ourselves in the market.” The old man said unto them, “My market is my cell, and whensoever I have need I lay down the work of my hands, and take up food for myself.”
281. An old man used to say, “Discretion is the most excellent thing of all.”
282. They used to say that certain men came to plead a case for judgement before Abbâ Ammonius, and the old man paid no attention to them, but behaved as if he did not hear them; and behold, a woman said unto her companion, “This old man hath no stability.” And the old man heard her speaking thus to her companion, and he called her, and said unto her, “How many labours have I performed in the desert so that I might acquire this instability! Yet, through thee, I have destroyed this day.”
283. An old man used to say, “Do not eat before thou art hungry, and do not lie down before thou art sleepy, and do not speak before thou art questioned.”
284. A brother asked an old man, saying, “Do I eat too many garden herbs?” The old man said unto him, “It will not benefit thee [to do so], but eat bread and a few vegetables, and thou shalt not go to thy kinsfolk for the sake of things [to eat].”
285. An old man used to say, “It is meet that a monk should be like the Cherub—all eyes.”
286. An old man used to say, “For a man to attempt to teach his neighbour, when he hath not been required [so to do], is the same as offering him a rebuke.”
287. Abbâ Poemen used to say, “Why doth a man distress himself to build the house of others, and not to over throw his own?”
288. He also used to say, “Why is it necessary for a man to enter by cunning, and not to learn [how to do so] properly?”
289. He also used to say, “Everything which is immoderate is from the devils.”
290. The old men used to say, “God demandeth nothing from Christians except that they shall hearken unto the Divine Scriptures, and shall carry into effect the things which are said in them, and shall be obedient unto their governors and the orthodox fathers.”
291. An old man used to say, “Whensoever I have been able to overtake my soul when I have transgressed, I never stumbled a second time.”
