[F]or those who would hasten to the perfection of that life there are the teaching of the Holy Fathers, the observance of which leads to the height of perfection. For what page or what utterance
of the divinely inspired books of the Old and New Testaments is not a most unerring rule for human life? Or what book of the holy Catholic Fathers does not loudly proclaim how we may come by a straight course to our Creator? Then the Conferences and the Institutes and the Lives of the Fathers,
as also the Rule of our holy Father Basil — what else are they but tools of virtue for [the] right-living and obedient…? But for us who are lazy and ill-living and negligent they are a source of shame and confusion. (The Rule, Chap. 73)