Quote by St. Silouan the Athonite,St. John of the Ladder,St. Mark the Ascetic & St. Photius the Great ~ The Snares of the Devil

   Love for that which is earthly makes the soul empty, and then there she is sad, and grows wild, and does not want to pray to God. The enemy then, seeing that the soul is not in God, shakes her and freely places in the mind whatever he wants, and he drives the soul from one thought to another, and thus the whole day the soul remains in such disorder and cannot purely gaze at the Lord.

(St. Silouan the Athonite, Writings, IV.5)

   Our inhuman enemy [the devil, in drawing a Christian to defilement] inspires the thought that God loves mankind, and that He quickly forgives this sin. But when we observe the guile of demons, then we see that after the commission of the sin, they suggest to us that God is a righteous and implacable Judge. The first they say in order to lead us to sin, the second, in order to weigh us down in despair.

(St. John of the Ladder, Ladder, 15:33) 


   The devil makes small sins seem smaller in our eyes, for otherwise he can't lead us to greater evil.

(St. Mark the Ascetic, Homilies, 2:94)

   When anyone goes into sin, his thoughts are is it were enchained and his vision is changed for the worse through that by means of which the evil one, instigating and flattering, weakens and darkens us. But after the sin has been committed he sets before our eyes what we have done and cruelly reveals that to which he has drawn us with much guile and, condeming the severity of the deed, endeavours by the same to draw the sinner into despair.

(St. Photius the Great, Amphilochius, 14)


Source:

http://orthodox.cn/patristics/300sayings_en.htm