A Chatterer is like an Old Boot
If two people are engaged in conversation they should speak in measured tones. Yelling and shouting is what idiots do. Talking in a whisper so that the person cannot hear is the mark of a fool.
In conversation we must not let ourselves be seized with the desire always to interrupt in order to show off our fatuous superiority. Everything ought to lead to tranquility, as in the words of the greeting ‘Peace be with you’. And, ‘Do not answer before first listening.’ [Eccles. 1:8]
Let us avoid being pompous or long-winded, or too hasty or too slow. Let us not talk for too long nor use too many words.
A chatterer is like an old boot. When all the rest has been used up, there is only the tongue left and that hurts the chatterer more than anyone else.
Clement of Alexandria
The Teacher, 2, 7 (PG8, 456)
The Powerful have a Thousand Masters
Those who live in what others consider splendour lose their liberty. They do not have one or two masters: they have a thousand.
Here we have a great man. He enjoys considerable wealth, enormous authority, illustrious ancestors, universal admiration. Yet he finds himself subjected to the yoke of a hard slavery.
He has a crowd of exacting masters. His first concern is to please the Emperor. Then there is such and such a prince who lends an ear to all the gossip and favours Tom today and Dick tomorrow. And then there are people of equal rank and his dependents, both friendly and hostile, to tyrannize over him.
The great, even if they have nothing with which to reproach themselves, yet have to be suspicious of each and every person they meet.
The truth is that those behind them are trying to get past them, while the others who are in front of them are doing all they can to keep that distance between them.
John Chrysostom
On the Gospel of St Matthew, 18, 4ff. (PG57, 269)
~ Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain, A Patristic Breviary: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
