Athanasius on Looking Past Life

“Christ alone, using common speech and through the agency of men not clever with their tongues, has convinced whole assemblies of people all the world over to despise death, and to take heed to the things that do not die, to look past the things of time and gaze on things eternal, to think nothing of earthly glory and to aspire to immortality.”

--Athanasius, On the Incarnation, translated and edited by A Religious of C.S.M.V. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), p. 85. (Probably first written around 318ad.)