Monastery Quotes

Collection of famous quotes and sayings about Monastery.

Quotes About Monastery

Enjoy collection of 100 Monastery quotes. Download and share images of famous quotes about Monastery. Righ click to see and save pictures of Monastery quotes that you can use as your wallpaper for free.

Because I wanted you." He turned from the window to face me. "More than I ever wanted anything in my life," he added softly.

I continued staring at him, dumbstruck. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn't this. Seeing my openmouthed expression, he continued lightly. "When I asked my da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I'd have no doubt. And I didn't. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself, 'Jamie Fraser, for all ye canna see what she looks like, and for all she weighs as much as a good draft horse, this is the woman'"

I started toward him, and he backed away, talking rapidly. "I said to myself, 'She's mended ye twice in as many hours, me lad; life amongst the MacKenzies being what it is, it might be as well to wed a woman as can stanch a wound and set broken bones.' And I said to myself, 'Jamie, lad, if her touch feels so bonny on your collarbone, imagine what it might feel like lower down...'"

He dodged around a chair. "Of course, I thought it might ha' just been the effects of spending four months in a monastery, without benefit of female companionship, but then that ride through the dark together"--he paused to sigh theatrically, neatly evading my grab at his sleeve--"with that lovely broad arse wedged between my thighs"--he ducked a blow aimed at his left ear and sidestepped, getting a low table betw ~ Diana Gabaldon
Monastery quotes by Diana Gabaldon
If I were to ask about my seven months at the Abbey, "Did it work, did I solve my problems?" the simple answer would be, "It did not work, it did not solve my problems." And I know that a year, two years, or even a lifetime as a Trappist monk would not have "worked" either. Because a monastery is not built to solve problems but to praise the Lord in the midst of them. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen
Monastery quotes by Henri J.M. Nouwen
Hey, what about you? That monastery didn't make you soft, I hope." "The Cistercians?" Chris laughed. "Make me soft? They're the toughest order in the Catholic Church." "They really don't talk?" "Not only that. They believe in brutal daily work. I might as well have spent another six years in Special Forces. ~ David Morrell
Monastery quotes by David Morrell
Combine meditation with career as a yoga. You will find that your practice will not be any less powerful than a person who lives in a monastery. You might even excel because practice in a monastery can get very one-sided. ~ Frederick Lenz
Monastery quotes by Frederick Lenz
Turn your car into a monastery. ~ Robert Barron
Monastery quotes by Robert Barron
The initiation with its various tortures lasted about a week, and I cheerfully accepted penances which, if they were imposed in a monastery, for a supernatural motive, and for some real reason, instead of for no reason at all, would cause such an uproar that all religious houses would be closed and the Catholic Church would probably have a hard time staying in the country. ~ Thomas Merton
Monastery quotes by Thomas Merton
I would go from one city to the next, inspired by the monks in the Middle Ages, who would carry knowledge from one monastery to the next monastery. ~ Hans Ulrich Obrist
Monastery quotes by Hans Ulrich Obrist
Pippin ordered Childeric III tonsured and sent to a monastery, where he died five years later, the last of the Merovingians. ~ Susan Wise Bauer
Monastery quotes by Susan Wise Bauer
Life, U May told her, is a gift full of riddles in which suffering and happiness are inextricably intertwined. Any attempt to have one without the other was simply bound to fail. The monastery itself was surrounded ~ Jan-Philipp Sendker
Monastery quotes by Jan-Philipp Sendker
No monastery has been successful at producing enlightenment. It has been tried; there are no shortcuts. ~ H.W.L. Poonja
Monastery quotes by H.W.L. Poonja
too. A monastery is like a mirror we hold up to the soul. It reflects back to us our weaknesses, struggles, flaws. But by looking deeply into that mirror, we can come face-to-face with an answer. ~ Judith Valente
Monastery quotes by Judith Valente
Hauk laughed unexpectedly. "You know, Ryn, I keep thinking back to what my father used to say to me. There are two kinds of people in this world. Those like my mother who can walk into the most backwater dive hole with the worst riffraff in the universe and in ten minutes, she'll have them baking cookies and singing love songs together. Then you have those like my father. The kind of man who could walk into an antiwar monastery and in ten minutes have the monks at each other's throats." - Dancer Hauk ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon
Monastery quotes by Sherrilyn Kenyon
Damned mating heat. Lawe is threatening to join a monastery and Rule's threatening to quit. Why don't you two try to show the younger guys it can be fun instead of taking a note out of everyone else's books and letting it drive you insane?
-Jonas ~ Lora Leigh
Monastery quotes by Lora Leigh
In any case, Klossowski, mentioned again during Acéphale's sessional meeting of 25 July 1938, would later return to his opposition between Nietzsche and Bataille in a lecture given in 1941 at the end of a retreat in a Dominican monastery, 'Le Corps du néant', later printed in the first edition of his book Sade my Neighbour (1947) and which Bataille later told him he 'does not like'. Here Klossowski recapitulated the two stages in the evolution of Nietzsche's thought outlined in Löwith's essay 'Nietzsche and the doctrine of the Eternal Return', which he had reviewed in Acéphale 2:
1. Liberation from the Christian YOU MUST to achieve the I WANT of supra-nihilism;
2. Liberation from the I WANT to attain the I AM of superhumanity in the eternal return.
It is precisely in this 'cyclical movement', according to Klossowski, that man 'takes on the immeasurable responsibility of the death of God'. Furthermore, he associates Bataille's negation of God with the negation of utility upon which the notion of expenditure was founded, and hence the source of his 'absolute political nihilism'. His conclusion, however, was a little more ambiguous: 'In his desire to relive the Nietzschean experience of the death of God [...] he did not have the privilege [...] of suffering Nietzsche's punishment: the delirium that transfigures the executioner into a victim [...] To be guilty or not to be, that is his dilemma. His acephality expresses only the unease of a guilt in which conscience ~ Georges Bataille
Monastery quotes by Georges Bataille
Members brought books, precious objects, and records of creature history to the city and purchased an island in the lagoon from the Catholic Church: Isola della Stella (Island of Stars). On it were monastic buildings that were converted to suit the Congregation's purposes. ..the vast, ancient monastery library, filled with books, papers, and papyri;...This council chamber, with its stunning frescoes, mosaics, vaulted ceiling, and gallery where the most precious records are kept, embodies the Congregation's power. ~ Deborah Harkness
Monastery quotes by Deborah Harkness
His Holiness leaned forward in his chair, stroking his chin thoughtfully. "Isn't that interesting? Only this morning at the temple, we saw novice monks competing for admission to the monastery. There are too many novices and not enough places. But turning to the jail, nobody wants to go there, even though the conditions are easier than in a monastery. This proves that it is not so much the circumstances of our lives that make us happy or unhappy but the way we see them." There were murmurs of agreement. "Do we believe that, whatever our circumstances, we have the chance to live happy and meaningful ~ David Michie
Monastery quotes by David Michie
You know what drives me crazy? It's all these people talking about how great technology is, and how it saves all this time. But, what good is saved time, if nobody uses it? If it just turns into more busy work. You never hear somebody say, 'With the time I've saved by using my word processor, I'm gonna go to a Zen monastery and hang out'. I mean, you never hear that. ~ Jesse
Monastery quotes by Jesse
Sorry, I thought I saw a guilt trip looming up,' said Clements. 'I had a Catholic upbringing - spent a week in a monastery once. My mother – a devout woman all her days, God bless her – thought it would do me good to be exposed to truly good people who had denied themselves everything to follow God.' Clements snorted and turned to look out of the car window.

'I take it, it didn't work?'

'I don't think there was a single one of them – apart from maybe a little Irishman, who had never known anything else - who wasn't on some kind of guilt trip. They hadn't given up anything at all: they were running away from things; hiding; the lot of them; and mainly from their real selves. Show me a monk and I'll show you one screwed-up individual with a past. ~ Ken McClure
Monastery quotes by Ken McClure
As long as we practice with a vow to help others, we are the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion, and we become the leading figure in the Heart Sutra, whether we are a layperson or are ordained, whether whether celibate or married, living in the monastery or living in secular society. ~ Dosung Yoo
Monastery quotes by Dosung Yoo
Inside my heart there is
A temple, a synagogue,
a church, a mosque,
A monastery, a fish market
A serene lake, a tempestuous sea
Agreements and disagreements
Glory and failure
A big bang at dawn and
a little bang at dusk
All the cries, aspirations and
silent prayers
Yearning and seeking
Everything disintegrates
and dissolves
In a tempestuous ocean
Finally unifies
Collapses on one altar
In one Breath
In God ~ Gabriel Iqbal
Monastery quotes by Gabriel Iqbal
The only people who had authority within the Church to stop Brendan Smyth from having contact with children were his Abbot in the Monastery in Kilnacrott and his Religious Superiors in the Norbertine Order. ~ Sean Brady
Monastery quotes by Sean Brady
The Offices rerooted me in a tradition where, monk or not, I would always be at home. From long ago I knew the power of their repetition, the incantatory force of the Psalms. But they had an added power now. As a kid, the psalmist (or psalmists) had seemed remote to me, the Psalms long prayers which sometimes rose to great poetry but often had simply to be endured. For a middle-aged man, the psalmists' moods and feelings came alive. One of the voices sounded a lot like a modern New Yorker, me or people I knew: a manic-depressive type A personality sometimes up, more often down, sometimes resigned, more often pissed off, railing about his sneaky enemies and feckless friends, always bitching to the Lord about the rotten hand he'd been dealt. That good old changelessness. ~ Tony Hendra
Monastery quotes by Tony Hendra
I think to be in a monastery or an ashram is not always the answer because we don't fight, we kick back. We don't listen to Sri Krishna. ~ Frederick Lenz
Monastery quotes by Frederick Lenz
The bells of the Gion monastery in India echo with the warning that all things are impermanent. The blossoms of the sala trees teach us through their hues that what flourishes must fade. The proud do not prevail for long but vanish like a spring night's dream. In time the mighty, too, succumb: all are dust before the wind. ~ Heike
Monastery quotes by Heike
I re-traced your footsteps to that miserable little Tibetan monastery. It was hard to get the monks to talk, what with that vow of silence and all – and how do you threaten someone who regards death as a promotion? ~ Anne Flanagan
Monastery quotes by Anne Flanagan
Leroy's reasoning is dry as a razor, and Chantal agrees: love as an exaltation of two individuals, love as fidelity, passionate attachment to a single person - no, that doesn't exist. And if it does exist, it is only as self-punishment, willful blindness, escape into a monastery. She tells herself that even if it does exist, love ought not to exist, and the idea does not maker her bitter, on the contrary, it produces a bliss that spreads throughout her body. She thinks of the metaphor of the rose that moves through all men and tells herself that she has been living locked away by love and now she is ready to obey the myth of the rose and merge with its giddy fragrance. ~ Milan Kundera
Monastery quotes by Milan Kundera
There must be a Joke Monastery up here – and Joke Monks.' He explained : 'You see, they think the world was created as a joke, so everyone should give thanks by having a good laugh. ~ Terry Pratchett
Monastery quotes by Terry Pratchett
When they say Don't I know you? say no.
When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.
If they say we should get together.
say why? It's not that you don't love them any more.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees.
The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished. When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.
Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye
Monastery quotes by Naomi Shihab Nye
Maybe this was the way it had always happened, with no fate ever involved; you simply fell in with the people around you, and no matter what else happened in history or the great world, for the individual it was always a matter of local acquaintances - the village, the platoon, the work unit, the monastery or madressa, the zawiyya or farm or apartment block, or ship, or neighborhood - these formed the true circumference of one's world, some twenty or so speaking parts, as if they were in a play together. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson
Monastery quotes by Kim Stanley Robinson
Instead of seeing the spiritual life as one that can exist only if it is enclosed by the walls of a monastery, Ignatius asks you to see the world as your monastery. ~ James Martin
Monastery quotes by James Martin
The early masters also introduced walking meditation and hard work to the monastery, for too much sitting could reach the point of diminishing returns. ~ James H. Austin
Monastery quotes by James H. Austin
Freedom of will is our birthright. ~ Jean Moreau, Abbey Of Kervennec, France
Monastery quotes by Jean Moreau, Abbey Of Kervennec, France
I no longer want a monastery which is too secure, I want a small monastery, like the house of a poor workman who is not sure if tomorrow he will find work and bread, who with all his being shares the suffering of the world. ~ Charles De Foucauld
Monastery quotes by Charles De Foucauld
When a man kills another man, the people say he is a murderer, but when the Emir kills him, the Emir is just. When a man robs a monastery, they say he is a thief, but when the Emir robs him of his life, the Emir is honourable. When a woman betrays her husband, they say she is an adulteress, but when the Emir makes her walk naked in the streets and stones her later, the Emir is noble. Shedding of blood is forbidden, but who made it lawful for the Emir? Stealing one's money is a crime, but taking away one's life is a noble act. Betrayal of a husband may be an ugly deed, but stoning of living souls is a beautiful sight. Shall we meet evil with evil and say this is the Law? Shall we fight corruption with greater corruption and say this is the Rule? Shall we conquer crimes with more crimes and say this is Justice? Had not the Emir killed an enemy in his past life? Had he not robbed his weak subjects of money and property? Had he not committed adultery? Was he infallible when he killed the murderer and hanged the thief in the tree? Who are those who hanged the thief in the tree? Are they angels descended from heaven, or men looting and usurping? Who cut off the murderer's head? Are they divine prophets, or soldiers shedding blood wherever they go? Who stoned that adulteress? Were they virtuous hermits who came from their monasteries, or humans who loved to commit atrocities with glee, under the protection of ignorant Law? What is Law? Who saw it coming with the sun from the depths ~ Kahlil Gibran
Monastery quotes by Kahlil Gibran
Even in a remote monastery, you may still be remote from the truth! To find the truth, all you need is a sound way of thinking. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan
Monastery quotes by Mehmet Murat Ildan
I first had a version of this at a Japanese monastery during a silent retreat-don't ask, it's a long story. ~ Gwyneth Paltrow
Monastery quotes by Gwyneth Paltrow
In our own case, we don't consider the loss of a monastery or a monument the end of our entire way of life. If one monastery is destroyed, sometimes it happens. ~ Dalai Lama
Monastery quotes by Dalai Lama
Religious despair is often a defense against boredom and the daily grind of existence. Lacking intensity in our lives, we say that we are distant from God and then seek to make that distance into an intense experience. It is among the most difficult spiritual ailments to heal, because it is usually wholly illusory. There are definitely times when we must suffer God's absence, when we are called to enter the dark night of the soul in order to pass into some new understanding of God, some deeper communion with him and with all creation. But this is very rare, and for the most part our dark nights of the soul are, in a way this is more pathetic than tragic, wishful thinking. God is not absent. He is everywhere in the world we are too dispirited to love. To feel him - to find him - does not usually require that we renounce all worldly possessions and enter a monastery, or give our lives over to some cause of social justice, or create some sort of sacred art, or begin spontaneously speaking in tongues. All to often the task to which we are called is simply to show a kindness to the irritating person in the cubicle next to us, say, or to touch the face of a spouse from whom we ourselves have been long absent, letting grace wake love from our intense, self-enclosed sleep. ~ Christian Wiman
Monastery quotes by Christian Wiman
A clever Zen teacher might say that standing back and letting the monastery burn belies a kind of attachment to the idea of nonattachment, that trying to save it when it could all burn anyway is true nonattachment. In trying to save Tassajara from the fire - or your own life from disaster - you can't be sure you will. In fact, you can lose everything you love in a moment. And that's not a reason to give up. If anything, it's a reason to turn toward the fire, recognizing it as a force of both creation and destruction, and to take care of what's right in front of you, because that's all you actually have. ~ Colleen Morton Busch
Monastery quotes by Colleen Morton Busch
Hasan Pasha also gave the green light for Turks and Greeks to take whatever action they pleased against any Albanians they found: killing them was not a crime. Continuing his march, he executed all the Albanians he encountered, setting fire to a monastery where other were hiding and offering five sequins for every Albanian head brought him. ~ Mark Mazower
Monastery quotes by Mark Mazower
Mystics knew how to channel grace through prayer and they knew the power of that. They knew how to receive guidance through reflection and contemplation; they knew how to share the gift of illumination with each other. These are great gifts of life and profound grace that we are capable of providing for each other and the world. This is what it means to be a mystic without a monastery. You make a commitment to your own interior illumination and through that discover the "sacred" part of your "contract" and the true meaning of your highest potential. ~ Caroline Myss
Monastery quotes by Caroline Myss
We need to make our own the ancient pastoral wisdom which ... encouraged Pastors to listen more widely to the entire People of God. Significant is Saint Benedict's reminder to the Abbot of a monastery, inviting him to consult even the youngest members of the community: "By the Lord's inspiration, it is often a younger person who knows what is best". ~ Pope John Paul II
Monastery quotes by Pope John Paul II
There are two primary ways of studying Zen. Either an individual will enter into a Zen monastery and study with a Zen master there, or they will study with a Zen master who lives in the contemporary world. ~ Frederick Lenz
Monastery quotes by Frederick Lenz
Science is turning into a monastery for the Order of Capitulant Friars. Logical calculus is supposed to supersede man as moralist. We submit to the blackmail of the 'superior knowledge' that has the temerity to assert that nuclear war can be, by derivation, a good thing, because this follows from simple arithmetic. ~ Stanislaw Lem
Monastery quotes by Stanislaw Lem
I shall always remember the next day for one of the most beautiful experiences I have ever had. As we marched forward we caught sight, after a while, of the gleaming golden towers of a monastery in the far distance. Above them, shining superbly in the morning sun, were tremendous walls of ice, and we gradually realised that we were looking at the giant trio Dhaulagiri, Annapurna and Manaslu. ~ Heinrich Harrer
Monastery quotes by Heinrich Harrer
Certain vocations, e.g., raising children, offer a perfect setting for living a contemplative life. They provide a desert for reflection, a real monastery. The mother who stays home with small children experiences a very real withdrawal from the world. Her existence is certainly monastic. Her tasks and preoccupations remove her from the centres of social life and from the centres of important power. She feels removed. Moreover, her constant contact with young children, the mildest of the mild, gives her a privileged opportunity to be in harmony with the mild and learn empathy and unselfishness. Perhaps more so even than the monk or the minister of the Gospel, she is forced, almost against her will, to mature. For years, while she is raising small children, her time is not her own, her own needs have to be put into second place, and every time she turns around some hand is reaching out demanding something. ~ Ronald Rolheiser
Monastery quotes by Ronald Rolheiser
For moderns - for us - there is something illicit, it seems, about wasted time, the empty hours of contemplation when a thought unfurls, figures of speech budding and blossoming, articulation drifting like spent petals onto the dark table we all once gathered around to talk and talk, letting time get the better of us. _Just taking our time_, as we say. That is, letting time take us.

"Can you say," I once inquired of a sixty-year old cloistered nun who had lived (vibrantly, it seemed) from teh age of nineteen in her monastery cell, "what the core of contemplative life is?"

"Leisure," she said, without hesitation, her china blue eyes cheerfully steady on me. I suppose I expected her to say, "Prayer." Or maybe "The search for God." Or "Inner peace." Inner peace would have been good. One of the big-ticket items of spirituality.

She saw I didn't see.

"It takes time to do this," she said finally.

Her "this" being the kind of work that requires abdication from time's industrial purpose (doing things, getting things). By choosing leisure she had bid farewell to the fevered enterprise of getting-and-spending whereby, as the poet said, we lay waste our powers. ~ Patricia Hampl
Monastery quotes by Patricia Hampl
I ended up going into this big art historical argument.' [Barry Blinderman] invoked, for example, Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim altarpiece, painted in the sixteenth century for a monastery where monks cared for people with skin diseases - so the suffering Christ in that painting shows symptoms of skin disease. 'It's because he's the man of sorrows,' Blinderman argued. 'He takes on the suffering of the world. So if Christ were to appear physically today, one of the sicknesses he would have to take on would be drug addiction. ~ Cynthia Carr
Monastery quotes by Cynthia Carr
But does contemptus mean 'contempt,' dear? Of course not. That would imply arrogance, superiority, pride. So much that we call worldly is actually just flawed or being seen through a cracked lens. Imperfect or imperfectly understood. Who are we to judge as contemptible a thing or person whose existence God sustains? Everything, however imperfect, has its purpose.

No, Tony dear, contemptus mundi means 'detachment from the world,' seeing the world sub specie aeternitatis. Enduring or celebrating it, but never forgetting - even when it seems perfect and forever - that as the Bible says: 'all this shall pass like grass before the wind. ~ Tony Hendra
Monastery quotes by Tony Hendra
Nobody goes into a Zen monastery as a tourist. ~ Leonard Cohen
Monastery quotes by Leonard Cohen
Shall always remember the next day for one of the most beautiful experiences I have ever had. As we marched forward we caught sight, after a while, of the gleaming golden towers of a monastery in the far distance. Above them, shining superbly in the morning sun, were tremendous walls of ice, and we gradually realised that we were looking at the giant trio Dhaulagiri, Annapurna and Manaslu. As ~ Heinrich Harrer
Monastery quotes by Heinrich Harrer
Now you are walking in Paris all alone in the crowd
As herds of bellowing buses drive by
Love's anguish tightens your throat
As if you were never to be loved again
If you lived in the old days you would enter a monastery
You are ashamed when you discover yourself reciting a prayer
You make fun of yourself and like the fire of Hell your laughter crackles
The sparks of your laugh gild the depths of your life
It's a painting hanging in a dark museum
And sometimes you go and look at it close up ~ Guillaume Apollinaire
Monastery quotes by Guillaume Apollinaire
I am a lama," said the man in yellow. "It is lamas who identify
incarnate Buddhas. If I say the Lord Chenresi is among us, some
will listen. Some of high rank will confirm my word. It is a good
thing for religion to have manifestations--which have been scarce
of late, and men are not so respectful as they used to be. Also,
it is a long way from Lhassa to this monastery. There can be a
rumor sent forth, that will take hold and excite, arousing the hope
of people, of whom many will be monks. So that they who will be
sent from Lhassa to investigate will not dare to deny the story,
knowing how much safer it is to deceive men than to undeceive them. ~ Talbot Mundy
Monastery quotes by Talbot Mundy
Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate conceptions of renunciation."A beggar cannot renounce wealth," Master would say. "If a man laments: 'My business has failed; my wife has left me; I will renounce all and enter a monastery,' to what worldly sacrifice is he referring? He did not renounce wealth and love; they renounced him!"Saints like Gandhi, on the other hand, have made not only tangible material sacrifices, but also the more difficult renunciation of selfish motive and private goal, merging their inmost being in the stream of humanity as a whole. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda
Monastery quotes by Paramahansa Yogananda
The monks who taught me," Hugh explained. "They lived in a monastery in that valley, built between two great trees, trees as eternal as the monks themselves. Under one bower the monks sat to meditate. That tree was called the Tree of Enlightenment. Under the other, the monks drank their wine. That tree was called the Tree of Eternal Life. ~ James Rollins
Monastery quotes by James Rollins
Ah! I wish I had the courage to work for the debasement of my contemporaries. What good work it would be to defile their daughters: to insinuate something obscene into the infantile hands which caress each paternal beard and cheek; to poison them, even at the risk of perishing ourselves; to do as those Spanish monks did, who drank death in order that they might persuade the French rabble which had violated their monastery to do likewise. ~ Remy De Gourmont
Monastery quotes by Remy De Gourmont
I turned into a monk when my mother went to learn Buddhism in Burma. While she learnt at the monastery, I used to roam around with a begging bowl and ask for food. ~ Kabir Bedi
Monastery quotes by Kabir Bedi
If you take a mental case into a Zen monastery, they put him in isolation for three weeks; nobody talks to him - just the opposite of psychoanalysis - nobody talks to him, nobody listens to him. They just keep him isolated; somebody goes, absolutely silently, and puts the food there, comes back. He has to live with himself for three weeks ... and miracles have been happening down the ages. Just putting him there for three weeks in isolation, slowly he cools down - no psychoanalysis, no therapy, just isolation. In fact, he was suffering too much from people, from the stress of being in a crowd continually. ~ Osho
Monastery quotes by Osho
That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all." There ~ G.K. Chesterton
Monastery quotes by G.K. Chesterton
I do not wonder that, where the monastick life is permitted, every order finds votaries, and every monastery inhabitants. Men will submit to any rule, by which they may be exempted from the tyranny of caprice and of chance. They are glad to supply by external authority their own want of constancy and resolution, and court the government of others, when long experience has convinced them of their own inability to govern themselves. ~ Samuel Johnson
Monastery quotes by Samuel Johnson
He prayed as he breathed, forming no words and making no specific requests, only holding his heart, like broken birds in cupped hands, ~ Ellis Peters
Monastery quotes by Ellis Peters
Hadrian walked over to where the boys were fighting and sat on the grass near Denek to watch. Denek, who was only twelve years old, glanced at him curiously. "Who are you?"

"My name is Hadrian," he replied as he extended his hand. The boy shook it, squeezing harder than was necessary. "You're Denek, right? The Pickerings' third son? Perhaps you should speak with my friend Myron, seeing as how I hear you are monastery-bound."

"Am not!" he shouted. "Going to the monastery, I mean. I can fight as well as Fanen."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Hadrian said. "Fanen is flat-footed, and his balance is off. He's not going to improve much either, because Mauvin is teaching him, and Mauvin is favoring his right and rocks back on his left too much."

Denek grinned at Hadrian and then turned to his brothers. "Hadrian says you both fight like girls!"

"What's that?" Mauvin said, whacking aside Fanen's loose attack once more.

"Oh, ah, nothing," Hadrian said, trying to recant, and glared at Denek, who just kept grinning. "Thanks a lot," he told the boy. ~ Michael J. Sullivan
Monastery quotes by Michael J. Sullivan
I like the monastic life ... in the prayer and the praising ... this has charged me with new energy, spiritual energy. This is very important for my ministry outside the monastery. ~ Pope Theodoros II
Monastery quotes by Pope Theodoros II
Spanish pilgrims travel on Camino de Santiago from monastery to monastery, collecting small medals to attach to their rosary as proof of their steps. I have stacks of Polaroids, each marking my own, that I sometimes spread out like tarots or baseball cards of an imagined celestial team. ~ Patti Smith
Monastery quotes by Patti Smith
AS IN THE REGIMENT HE HAD BEEN NOT MERELY AN IRREPROACHABLE OFFICER but had exceeded his duties, widened the borders of perfection, also as a monk he tried to be perfect, was always industrious, abstemious, submissive, meek, as well as pure both in deed and
in thought and obedient. If many of the demands of life in the monastery which was near the capital, much frequented, did not please him, and were temptations to him, they were all nullified by obedience ~ Leo Tolstoy
Monastery quotes by Leo Tolstoy
He was a polite, thoughtful boy, who could spend hours in one spot, staring at the purple mountains against the clear blue sky, lost in his own thoughts and emotions. It was said of him that he had a monk's vocation, and that in Japan he would have been a novice in a Zen monastery. Although the Oomoto faith discouraged proselytizing, Takao surreptitiously preached his religion to Heideko and his children, but Ichimei was the only one who practiced it with fervor, because it fit in with his character and with the concept of life that he had had since childhood. ~ Isabel Allende
Monastery quotes by Isabel Allende
Did you know your hair is just precisely the same shade as a teak inlaid ceiling in a monastery I once stayed at ~ Stephenie Meyer
Monastery quotes by Stephenie Meyer
I don't think there's any great mystery to writing female characters, so long as you talk to them. If you lived in a monastery and never met any women, maybe it would be difficult. ~ Ken Follett
Monastery quotes by Ken Follett
But the most sumptuous thing in the room at that moment was naturally the sumptuously laid table, though, of course, even that was comparatively speaking: the table-cloth was clean, the silver was brightly polished; three kinds of wonderfully baked bread, two bottles of wine, two bottles of excellent monastery mead, and a large glass jug of monastery kvas, famous throughout the neighbourhood. There was no vodka at all. Rakitin related afterwards that this time it was a five-course dinner: fish soup of sterlets served with fish patties; then boiled fish excellently prepared in a special way; then salmon cutlets, ice cream and stewed fruits and, finally, a fruit jelly. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Monastery quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Merton. Gethsemani required a vow of silence, and at dinner if you wanted salt, you had to stare hard at the shaker until another brother noticed. One day, cutting down a tree, Jack couldn't contain himself. He held his head back and roared, "Timber." After that, his days at the monastery were numbered. Within a couple of years, he had married, and he and his young wife, Fran, who herself had just spent a year in a nunnery, opened a Catholic Worker farm in eastern Missouri for recovering alcoholics. ~ Alex Kotlowitz
Monastery quotes by Alex Kotlowitz
You should have been a jester instead of a knight. (Sin)
True, but jesters don't get to carry a sword. Personally, I like my sword. You know, the whole knight images really makes the ladies lust for me. Not that any have lusted for me recently, since I have only been in the company of married women, but one is ever hopeful ... Oh, wait, I'm in Scotland, where they hate us English. Damn, my chances with the women have just fallen to nil. Wasn't there a monastery a few leagues back? Mayhap I should go take my vows and just save myself the embarrassment of being sneered at. (Simon) ~ Kinley MacGregor
Monastery quotes by Kinley MacGregor
You'll pray for us sinners; we have sinned too much here. I've always been thinking who would pray for me, and whether there's any one in the world to do it. My dear boy, I'm awfully stupid about that. You wouldn't believe it. Awfully. You see, however stupid I am about it, I keep thinking, I keep thinking--from time to time, of course, not all the while. It's impossible, I think, for the devils to forget to drag me down to hell with their hooks when I die. Then I wonder--hooks? Where would they get them? What of? Iron hooks? Where do they forge them? Have they a foundry there of some sort? The monks in the monastery probably believe that there's a ceiling in hell, for instance. Now I'm ready to believe in hell, but without a ceiling. It makes it more refined, more enlightened, more Lutheran that is. And, after all, what does it matter whether it has a ceiling or hasn't? But, do you know, there's a damnable question involved in it? If there's no ceiling there can be no hooks, and if there are no hooks it all breaks down, which is unlikely again, for then there would be none to drag me down to hell, and if they don't drag me down what justice is there in the world? Il faudrait les inventer, those hooks, on purpose for me alone, for if you only knew, Alyosha, what a blackguard I am. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Monastery quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
You are like the beach at dawn when the fog comes in; each of those things is lovely on its own, but together, they can be magical. ~ Deborah Blake
Monastery quotes by Deborah Blake
Well, listen then. On the other side, fresh young lives thrown away for want of help and by thousands, on every side! A hundred thousand good deeds could be done and helped, on that old woman's money which will be buried in a monastery! Hundreds, thousands perhaps, might be set on the right path; dozens of families saved from destitution, from ruin, from vice, from the Lock hospitals - and all with her money. Kill her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of humanity and the good of all. What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life thousands would be saved from corruption and decay. One death, and a hundred lives in exchange - it's simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence! No more than the life of a louse, of a black-beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing harm. She is wearing out the lives of others; the other day she bit Lizaveta's finger out of spite; it almost had to be amputated. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Monastery quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
He'd once heard a story about a monastery on the top of some mountain in Japan or somewhere. After a long trek in the cold to get there, the monks would offer to sell you a cup of coffee. You had a choice: There was a two-dollar cup - or a two-hundred- dollar cup. When pressed to explain the difference, the monks were reported to say, 'A hundred and ninety-eight dollars.' ~ Steve Perry
Monastery quotes by Steve Perry
...as our gaze into the luminous vastness deepens and strengthens, and the prayer word grows quiet, and spiritual practices fall away due to their own ripened readiness, so do our projections onto monasteries, cathedrals, canyons and mountains, and the 'perfect partner' also fall away. When we discover unshakably that the God we seek has already found us, then the 'monastery' or 'mountain' or 'perfect partner' does not have the same pull. They are no longer holding out to us a reflection of our innermost self that is one with God. ~ Martin LairdInto The Silent Land
Monastery quotes by Martin LairdInto The Silent Land
There is a quaint old theory that man may have two souls - a peripheral one which serves ordinarily, and a central one which is stirred only at certain times, but then with activity and vigour.
While under the domination of the former a man will shave, vote, pay taxes, give money to his family, buy subscription books and comport himself on the average plan.
But let the central soul suddenly become dominant, and he may, in the twinkling of an eye, turn upon the partner of his joys with furious execration; he may change his politics while you could snap your fingers; he may deal out deadly insult to his dearest friend; he may get him, instanter, to a monastery or a dance hall; he may elope, or hang himself - or he may write a song or poem, or kiss his wife unasked, or give his funds to the search of a microbe. Then the peripheral soul will return; and we have our safe, sane citizen again. It is but the revolt of the Ego against Order; and its effect is to shake up the atoms only that they may settle where they belong. ~ O. Henry
Monastery quotes by O. Henry
Everybody was talking about the religious man who committed suicide.
While no one in the monastery approved of the man's action, some say they admired his faith.
Faith?" said the Master.
He had the courage of his convictions, didn't he?"
That was fanaticism, not faith. Faith demands a greater courage still: to reexamine one's convictions and reject them if they do not fit the facts. ~ Anthony De Mello
Monastery quotes by Anthony De Mello
Living in our home was a lot like living in a cloistered monastery - conversations were limited, meals were hearty and timely, and all issues of significance were left to higher powers. ~ Michael Bowe
Monastery quotes by Michael  Bowe
In a quiet Franciscan monastery kind and silent monks looked after me. After many weeks I was discharged. Unfit for further service. ~ Ernst Toller
Monastery quotes by Ernst Toller
My imagination is a monastery, and I am its monk ~ John Keats
Monastery quotes by John Keats
You have to put yourself in a situation, a lifestyle, that makes you do the work. Even if it's a monastery. ~ Martin Scorsese
Monastery quotes by Martin Scorsese
In the monastery of your heart, you have a temple where all Buddhas unite. ~ Milarepa
Monastery quotes by Milarepa
We took a bus to the nearby monastery of one of the last great Tang dynasty Chan masters, Yun-men. Yun-men was known for his pithy "one word" Zen. When asked "What is the highest teaching of the Buddha?" he replied: "An appropriate statement." On another occasion, he answered: "Cake." I admired his directness. ~ Stephen Batchelor
Monastery quotes by Stephen Batchelor
All the people in the Kuo-ch'ing monastery They say, "Han-shan is an idiot." "Am I really an idiot:" I reflect. But my reflections fail to solve the question: for I myself do not know who the self is, And how can others know who I am? ~ Hanshan
Monastery quotes by Hanshan
What frustrated me was the thought that with three thousand years of history someone in China, some monk in a monastery halfway up a mountain, must have developed a magic kata, a physical expression of formae. Or at least have got close enough to explain all those legendary swordsmen and their inexplicable desire to roost on the tops of bamboo trees. ~ Ben Aaronovitch
Monastery quotes by Ben Aaronovitch
Although it is a bit of a caricature, I think that there is some truth in the generalizations I'm about to make. The tendency in Roman Catholic theology is to view the kingdom of Christ as a cosmic ladder or tower, leading from the lowest strata to the hierarchy led by the pope. Anabaptists have tended to see the kingdom more as a monastery, a community of true saints called out of the world and a worldly church. Lutheran and Reformed churches tend sometimes to see the kingdom as a school, while evangelicals (at least in the United States) lean more toward seeing it as a market. ~ Michael S. Horton
Monastery quotes by Michael S. Horton
The life of the cenobite is a human problem. When we speak of convents, those seats of error but innocence, of mistaken views but good intentions, of ignorance but devotion, of torment but martyrdom, we must nearly always say yes or no ... The monastery is a renunciation. Self-sacrifice, even when misdirected, is still self-sacrifice. To assume as duty a strict error has its peculiar grandeur. ~ Victor Hugo
Monastery quotes by Victor Hugo
To retire to the monastery, or the woods, or the sea, is to escape from the sharp suggestions that spur on ambition. ~ Charles Horton Cooley
Monastery quotes by Charles Horton Cooley
Could he be interested in her? How did people know? Perhaps if she had grown up like a normal woman, she would know when a man was interested in her. Instead, she grew up in a monastery where there were no such feelings, at least not openly expressed. ~ Morgan L. Busse
Monastery quotes by Morgan L. Busse
I had a real yearning to make use of the opportunities I had at school. When I heard about the gap year of teaching English at a Tibetan monastery, I knew I had to do something about it really quickly, otherwise it was going to get allocated. ~ Benedict Cumberbatch
Monastery quotes by Benedict Cumberbatch
Mr. Monogamy doesn't find my shenanigans funny? Oh thank god, if you did I'd have to chuck it all and join a monastery. ~ Kim Cormack
Monastery quotes by Kim Cormack
Have come to us perhaps only to see whether here he could sacrifice all or only "two roubles," and in the monastery he met this elder. I must ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Monastery quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The greatest religion gives suffering to nobody," reads a weather-beaten sign, quoting the Buddha, at Chele La pass, the highest motorable point in the country, near Paro. This maxim is everywhere evident. As a Bhutanese friend and I walked in the mountains one afternoon, he reflexively removed insects from the path and gently placed them in the verge, out of harm's way. Early one morning in Thimphu, I saw a group of young schoolboys, in their spotless white-sleeved ghos, crouching over a mouse on the street, gently offering it food. In Bhutan, the horses that trudge up the steep trail to the Tiger's Nest monastery are reserved for out-of-shape tourists; Bhutanese don't consider horses beasts of burden and prefer not to make them suffer under heavy loads. Even harvesting honey is considered a sign of disrespect for the industrious bees; my young guide, Kezang, admonished me for buying a bottle of Bhutanese honey to take home. (Chastened, I left it there.) In ~ Madeline Drexler
Monastery quotes by Madeline Drexler
Picnic, Lightning

It is possible to be struck by a meteor
or a single-engine plane
while reading in a chair at home.
Safes drop from rooftops
and flatten the odd pedestrian
mostly within the panels of the comics,
but still, we know it is possible,
as well as the flash of summer lightning,
the thermos toppling over,
spilling out on the grass.

And we know the message
can be delivered from within.
The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored
into the flow of the body's rivers,
the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.

This is what I think about
when I shovel compost
into a wheelbarrow,
and when I fill the long flower boxes,
then press into rows

the limp roots of red impatiens -
the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.

Then the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam.
Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue,
the clouds a brighter white,

and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone,
the small plants singing
with lifted faces, and the click
of the sundial
as one hour sweeps into the next. ~ Billy Collins
Monastery quotes by Billy Collins
One learns more of Christ in being married and rearing children than in several lifetimes spent in study in a monastery. ~ Martin Luther
Monastery quotes by Martin Luther
Then I used to lock myself in my room, or go to the end of the garden, climb on to the ruin of a high stone greenhouse and, dangling my legs from the wall which looked out on the road, would sit for hours, staring and staring, seeing nothing. Near me, over the dusty nettles, white butterflies fluttered lazily. A pert little sparrow would fly down on to a half-broken red brick nearby, and would irritate me with its chirping, ceaselessly turning its whole body with its outspread tail; the crows, still wary, occasionally cawed, sitting high, high on the bare top of a birch -- while the sun and wind played gently in its spreading branches; the bells of the Donskoy monastery would sometimes float across -- tranquil and sad -- and I would sit and gaze and listen, and would be filled with a nameless sensation which had everything in it; sorrow and joy, a premonition of the future, and desire, and fear of life. At the time, I understood none of this, and could not have given a name to any of the feelings which seethed within me; or else I would have called it all by one name – the name of Zinaida. ~ Ivan Turgenev
Monastery quotes by Ivan Turgenev
Looking out the window of a large women's monastery after Divine Liturgy, my friend saw a few nuns walking toward the woods with satchels on their backs. Inquiring who they were, she was told they were ascetics who lived in the wilderness and had come to the monastery to attend Liturgy and to receive some food. Although we are much weaker in our times and far less ascetical than the early desert fathers and mothers, let it never be said that extreme Christian asceticism is extinct. Who knows how many St. Mary of Egypts are hidden in the wilderness? ~ Constantina R. Palmer
Monastery quotes by Constantina R. Palmer
Personally I would like to have pupils, a studio, pass on my love to them, work with them, without teaching them anything ... A convent, a monastery, a phalanstery of painting where one could train together ... but no programme, no instruction in painting ... drawing is still alright, it doesn't count, but painting - the way to learn is to look at the masters, above all at nature, and to watch other people painting.. ~ Paul Cezanne
Monastery quotes by Paul Cezanne
Through the uneven morning mist, she could make out the ruin of the monastery on the northern verge. The broken, roofless walls of outbuildings stretched south of the main ruins in a broken curve. Birches and a few young oaks had grown up where monks had likely once raised vegetables. The rest of the clearing was filled with grass and brambles cut through with newly blazed paths. Four lean-tos had been erected just beyond the stone fence of an overgrown graveyard. ~ Neal Stephenson
Monastery quotes by Neal Stephenson
Mindfulness Meditation Quotes «
» Awwwww Moments Quotes