Son of well-off Coptic farmers, at twenty he heard the Gospel of the rich young man, sold everything and went deep into the Egyptian desert. Twenty years of solitude and struggle, then crowds came asking him for a word; his fame ran as far as Gaul. Father of Christian monasticism, he died at one hundred and five.
In their own words
Our life and our death come to us by way of our neighbour. Win our brother, and we have won God; trip our brother, and it is against Christ that we sin.
Sayings of the Desert Fathers, alphabetical collection, Anthony 9 (PG 65), translated from the Greek by the Manna team
I saw all the traps of the enemy laid open over the earth, and I groaned: who gets past these? And I heard a voice: humility.
Sayings of the Desert Fathers, alphabetical collection, Anthony 7 (PG 65), translated from the Greek by the Manna team
The prayer is not yet perfect in which the monk still notices himself, or notices that he is praying.
reported by John Cassian, Conferences, IX, 31, Manna team version, not collated against the Latin