There are words which, due to the inspiration that generated them and the wisdom that took up residence there, remain as lasting stones of a cosmic building of which every human being, and not just the believer, feels like an inhabitant. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers are part of these “words”. Their place of origin is Egypt, where they were pronounced and preserved by the first generations of Christian monasticism. But when the barbarian incursions of the early 5th century, and perhaps even a certain decade, pushed many monks to abandon those regions, the fear that this precious heritage would be lost convinced the loners who took refuge in Palestine to write it down. Thus were born the first collections in Greek, subsequently translated into Coptic, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopian, Armenian and Latin, enriched with new texts, specific to these traditions and their respective monastic experiences. The choice presented here draws from all these collections.