A person released from long captivity is not so full of joy as the intellect freed from its attachment to sensible things and winging its way towards the heavenly realm that is its native land.
No one can pray purely if he is constrained by the passions of ostentation and ambition. For the attachments and frivolous thoughts in which these passions involve him will twine around him like ropes and during prayer will drag his intellect down like a fettered bird that is trying to fly.
~Ilias the Presbyter
Prayerful Life 