“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdome….” (Prov 9:10) 

“Simplicity then possesses in itself some beginning of God’s creation, that is, a simple and good will, the shapeless material, as it were, of what will be a good man, and at the outset of its conversion it offers this to its maker to be formed. For since together with good will it already has a beginning of wisdom, that is the fear of the Lord, from it it learns that it cannot be formed by itself and that nothing is so advantageous for a fool as to serve a wise man.

Accordingly it submits to a man for God’s sake, entrusting to him its good will to be formed in God, in the feelings and the spirit of humility. Already the fear of God is beginning to develop all the plenitude of the virtues: justice, because it defers to a superior: prudence, because it does not trust in itself; temperance, because it refrains from deciding for itself; fortitude, because it submits itself wholly to obedience, concerned not to judge but only to do what it is bidden.

For this is the wife to whom the Lord said: “You shall be turned toward your husband.” (Gen 3:16) Its husband is either its own reason or spirit or that of another. This is the husband a simple and upright man rightly obeys in himself – but often more rightly and more safely in another than in himself.”

– William of St. Thierry, The Golden Epistle 50-52 –