Of our venerable father John, abbot of Mount Sinai

Repentance is the renewal of baptism; repentance is a covenant with God for a new life.

Repentance is the daughter of hope and the refusal of despair.

Repentance is the unashamed condemnation of oneself.

Repentance is the offering to God of works of righteousness, equal in measure to one's sins.

Repentance is the cleansing of the conscience, which God has set within man as the accuser of evil.

Repentance is the door of consolation, that a man may renounce his own will and his own wickedness.

Repentance is the willing endurance of every affliction and temptation.

Repentance is the strong constraining of one's own belly, and the unceasing self-reproach and shaming of one's own soul, with a steadfast fervour of heart.

Repentance draws a man near to God and sets him far from sins.

Know, beloved, that we who have fallen into the pit of sin cannot come up out of it unless we plunge into the abyss of the humility of the penitent.

Do not be cast down by hopelessness, though thou shouldest fall every day; but stand bravely and with understanding in repentance, and thy patience will be pleasing to that angel who is appointed to guard thee, and he will assuredly come to thy help.

Before we fall into sin the demons tell us that God forgives sins; and after the fall they tell us that God is a righteous judge.

Do not listen to him who says to thee of small faults: “it is well that thou hast not done some great thing; this is nothing”; for a small gift has often quenched the great wrath of the judge.

He who is in true repentance counts as lost every day in which he has not mourned, even though he has done some other good thing in it.

Let none of the penitent look to repent well at the hour of death and to receive forgiveness; for every matter that is unknown and unseen is not sure.

He who mourns for himself will never judge or reproach another for his fall.

Let us take heed, brethren, lest it be not from purity that the conscience has ceased to reprove us, but that it has grown weary and therefore reproves us no more.

The sign of forgiveness is this: that a man should always account himself a debtor.

Whoever has humility and mourning for his sins will not grow slothful until the day of his death; but they who are without these two deceive themselves.

The sign of true repentance is this: that we should account ourselves worthy of all afflictions and temptations, seen and unseen.