The Twelve Books on the Institutes of the Cœnobia, and the Remedies for the Eight Principal Faults

St. John Cassian · c. 420 AD

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Section 5

A comparison which shows the nature of vainglory

Our elders admirably describe the nature of this malady as like that of an onion, and of those bulbs which when stripped of one covering you find to be sheathed in another; and as often as you strip them, you find them still protected.