On the Great Athanasius
By Saint Gregory Nazianzen

To speak of and admire him fully, would perhaps be too long a task…He was noble in action, humble in mind, unapproachable in virtue, very approachable in conversation, gentle, free from anger, sympathetic, sweet in words, sweeter in disposition; angelic in appearance, more angelic in mind, calm in rebuke, persuasive in praise…His disposition sufficed for the training of his spiritual children with very little need for words…His life and habits form the ideal of a bishop and his teachings the law of orthodoxy…

[To the monks]…whatever he thought was for them a law, whatever on the contrary he disapproved, they renounced. His decisions were to them the tables of Moses, and they paid more reverence [to him] than is due to the Saints…

Let one praise him in his fastings and prayers as if he had been without a body and immaterial, another his tirelessness and zeal for vigils and psalmody, another his support of the needy, another his unyielding stance towards the powerful, or his condescension to the lowly. Let the virgins celebrate the friend of the Bridegroom…hermits [the one] who gives wings to their course, cenobites their lawgiver, simple folk their guide, contemplatives their theologian…the unfortunate their consolation, the elderly their staff, youths their instructor, the poor their resource, the wealthy their steward. Even the widows will, I think, praise their protector, even the orphans their father, even the poor their benefactor, strangers their host, brothers the man of brotherly love, the sick their physician…

In a good old age he ended his life, and was gathered to his fathers, the Patriarchs, and Prophets, and Apostles, and Martyrs, who contended for the faith.