Monk Quotes

There is, Oh Monks, a not-born, a not-become, a not-made, a not-compounded. Monks, if that unborn, not-become, not-made, not-compounded were not, there would be no escape from this here that is born, become, made and compounded. ~ Gautama Buddha

I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence Was there ever a more galling verse in the Bible? ~ Sue Monk Kidd

The time to assert one's right is when it's denied! ~ Sue Monk Kidd

And it's just a hunt?" Bea asked. "Just tracking the guy down, or are we going to have to do a little covering up of our own?"
Had she just told me she was willing to kill someone and cover it up? She gave me a happy smile, but that glint in her eyes told me that, yes, she'd just offered to off someone. ~ Devon Monk

Amma Theodora said: A certain monk, afflicted by many sorrows, said to himself, "Leave this place." With these words he began to put his sandals on his feet, and suddenly he saw the devil in the form of a man sitting in the corner of his cell. The devil was also putting on his sandals. He said to the monk, "Are you leaving here because of me? Well then, wherever you go, I will be there before you." ~ Ignatius Bryanchaninov

Buddha is said to have given a "silent sermon" once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile. He is said to have been the only one who had understood the sermon. According to legend, that smile (that is to say, realization) was handed down by twenty-eight successive masters and much later became the origin of Zen. ~ Eckhart Tolle

If I say, "I am a monk." or "I am a Buddhist," these are, in comparison to my nature as a human being, temporary. To be human is basic. ~ Dalai Lama

Back in the autumn I had awakened to a growing darkness and cacophony, as if something in the depths were crying out. A whole chorus of voices. Orphaned voices. They seemed to speak for all the unlived parts of me, and they came with a force and dazzle that I couldn't contain. They seemed to explode the boundaries of my existence. I know now that they were the clamor of a new self struggling to be born. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

She was wet with my crying. Up around her collar the cotton of her dress was plastered to her skin. I could see her darkness shining through the wet places. She was like a sponge, absorbing what I couldn't hold anymore. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Some things were not possible in this world. Children did not have two parents who refused to love them. One, maybe, but for pity's sake, not two. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

I feared my grief would turn to despair, that it would become a skin I couldn't shed. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

So few people know what they're capable of. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

The devout life does not solely entail living as a monk or ascetic, though that is fine. The devout life requires bringing God into all things. ~ David Paul Kirkpatrick

I'm a basketball player, not a monk. ~ Marvin Barnes

The translucence that comes when life hardens into a bead of such cruel perfection you see it with the purest clarity. Everything suddenly there
life as it truly is, enormous, appalling, devastating. You see the great sinkholes it makes in people and the harrowing lengths to which love will go to fill them. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Meditate, he'd said. Jingo Jingo was such a joker. ~ Devon Monk

You're a good kid. If you'd work on your pain-in-the-ass tendencies, you'd be real nice."
"Too bad that isn't going to happen anytime soon," he muttered. "Real nice doesn't get you very far."
"Real nice can keep you from getting beat up," I said.
He smiled. "Right. Maybe we should both work on it, then. ~ Devon Monk

I somehow sensed when I was a teenager that I wanted to do my own work. I was quite clear that I didn't want to be an interpretative kind of artist. I had an intuition about wanting to create my own form, in one way or another, whatever that would be. ~ Meredith Monk

I opened the door as quickly as I could - speedy as a snail in glue. My fine-motor coordination was set on suck mode. ~ Devon Monk

It seemed like that's when she started laying her cold fire of hate. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Reading from St. John Chrysostom that the life of a bishop should be more perfect than the life of a hermit. The reason he gave was that the holiness which the monk preserves in the desert must be preserved by the bishop into the midst of the evil of the world. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

I don't have a definition of Jazz. You're just supposed to know it when you hear it. ~ Thelonious Monk

I'd chosen the regret I could live with best, that's all. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

A worker bee is just over a centimeter long and weighs only about sixty milligrams; nevertheless, she can fly with a load heavier than herself. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers. ~ Max Roach

Love God's people. Because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, we are no holier than those that are outside, but on the contrary, from the very fact of coming here, each of us has confessed to himself that he is worse than others, than all men on earth ... And the longer the monk lives in his seclusion, the more keenly he must recognise that. Else he would have no reason to come here. When he realises that he is not only worse than others, but that he is responsible to all men for all and everything, for all human sins, national and individual, only then the aim of seclusion is attained. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I couldn't imagine what it cost him to say these words. "I do," I said. "And you must forgive me. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Writing in the voice of an American slave felt like I was biting off something very large. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

My comic sense, although deliberately Americanized, is, in its intent, much closer related to the crazy wisdom of Zen monks and the goofy genius of Taoist masters than it is to, say, the satirical gibes on Saturday Night Live. It has both a literary and a metaphysical function. ~ Tom Robbins

Contrary to popular stereotypes, seeking simplicity doesn't require that you become a monk, a subsistence forager, or a wild-eyed revolutionary. Nor does it mean that you must unconditionally avoid the role of consumer. Rather, simplicity merely requires a bit of personal sacrifice: an adjustment of your habits and routines within consumer society itself. ~ Rolf Potts

In the void, there is no distinction of east and west."
Gwen blinked slightly at that. "I know all of those words, and yet when strung together like that I have no idea what they mean. ~ Jim Butcher

I live like a monk: with one toothbrush, one cake of soap, and a pot of cream. ~ Greta Garbo

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

He, Cromwell, says to his visitors, just tell them this, and tell them loud: to each monk, one bed: to each bed, one monk. Is that so hard for them? ~ Hilary Mantel

THE SIMPLE UNION

Listen to me, O friend.

Be thou a yogi, a monk, a priest,
A devout lover of God,
A pilgrim searching for Happiness, Bathing in holy rivers,
Visiting sacred shrines,
The occasional worshipper of a day,
A great reader of books, Or a builder of many temples -
My love aches for thee.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved.

This vain struggle,
This long toil,
This ceaseless sorrow,
This changing pleasure,
This burning doubt,
This burden of life,
All these will cease, O friend -
My love aches for thee.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved.

Have I pilgrimage the earth,
Have I loved the reflections,
Have I chanted, singing in ecstasy,
Have I donned the robe,
Have I put on ashes,
Have I listened to the temple bells,
Have I grown old with study,
Have I searched,
Was I lost?
Yea, much have I known -
My love aches for thee.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved,

O friend,
Wouldst thou love the reflection,
If I can give thee the reality?
Throw away thy bells, thine incense,
Thy fears and thy gods,
Set aside thy systems, thy philosophies.
Come,
Put aside all these.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved.

O friend,
The simple union is the best.

This is the way to the heart of the Beloved. ~ Anonymous

I was a very good nurse, but I burned out after eight years or so because it wasn't what I truly wanted to do. Writing is what I belong to. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Put the mind in alignment with the ten thousand radiances of enlightenment and experience them in various gradations forever. That's the total purpose of a monk. ~ Frederick Lenz

If a monk can overcome two things, he can become free from the world. Bodily ease and vain-glory. ~ Poemen

How did we ever get the idea that God would supply us on demand with quick fixes, that God is merely a rescuer and not a midwife? ~ Sue Monk Kidd

We were kept at work, and permitted to speak with each other only on such subjects as related to the Convent, and all in the hearing of the old nuns who sat by us. ~ Maria Monk

It can't be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean! ~ Thelonious Monk

Said the monk: "All these mountains and rivers and the earth and stars - where do they come from?" Said the master: "Where does your question come from?" ~ Anthony De Mello

To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Up to now my involvement in the Tibetan freedom struggle has been part of my spiritual practice, because the issues of the survival of the Buddha Teaching and the freedom of Tibet are very much related. In this particular struggle, there is no problem with many monks and nuns, including myself, joining. ~ Dalai Lama

It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Readiness for dying arrives by attending the smallest moment and finding the eternal inside of it. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Miles'd got killed if he hit me. ~ Thelonious Monk

Missus called out to Tomfry, said keep it down, a lady shouldn't know where her bacon comes from. When we heard that, I told Aunt-Sister, missus didn't know what end her bacon went in and what end it came out. Aunt-Sister slapped me into yesterday. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

The only cats worth anything are the cats that take chances. ~ Thelonious Monk

Even in dreams and in death, a monk and a fox are from different worlds, as they were in life, and in different worlds they will forever stay ~ Neil Gaiman

The basic dynamics of conversion are summed up for me in the words LEAVE-ARRIVE, END-BEGIN, SHED-EMERGE. These are the tensions of conversion and spiritual awakening. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

We didn't like each other when you were alive," I muttered to my father. "You think living in my head is going to change that? ~ Devon Monk

But I would tell Mother none of this. Nor would I tell her that at the hour of his death, I was floating free in the ocean, in a solitude I would remember all of my life, the gulls cawing over my head and the white flag flying at the top of the pole. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

The prototypic Don Juan, invented early in the XVI century by a Spanish monk, was ~ George Bernard Shaw

If you cry 'Forward' you must be sure to make clear the direction in which to go. Don't you see that if you fail to do that and simply call out the word to a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions? ~ Anton Chekhov

Free of all responsibility or restraint, in the sheer obliviousness of dreams, he had lived like a happy pagan; and now he must go back to the drear existence of a mediaeval monk, beneath the prompting of an obscure sense of duty. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

I eventually found that the soul is more than an immortal commodity to win and save. It is the repository of the inner divine, the truest part of us. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

I marveled at how mixed up people got when it came to love. I myself, for instance. It seemed like I was now thinking of Zach forty minutes out of every hour, Zach, who was an impossibility. That's what I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log throw on the fires of love. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

That's crazy-rare."

"And now it's extinct. ~ Devon Monk

I'm like a monk with a taste for hookers. ~ Moby

All I want to be is a wandering entrepreneur touching billions of lives. I am going to be the monk who never bought a Ferrari. ~ Sharad Vivek Sagar

I'm a huge fan of Adam Sandler and used to have Adam Sandler nights when I was younger. And he's so funny on the set. ~ Sophie Monk

One thing is beautiful beyond my words to say it: August holding you. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

A few days ago Tan Casipo said to me, 'Some people come here with so much dust in their eyes it's unbearable to talk to them.' What does that say about the monkhood? He can't tolerate people with 'dust in their eyes.' All that these monks have developed here is a safe little self-centred world which they call holy because villagers bow down to them. Living in a forest and wearing a robe doesn't make you better than anybody else. ~ Tim Ward

I had got where I talked to her all the time. Like I would say, I didn't hear her talk back, so I hadn't lost my sanities. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Women who bear the weight of opposition, she wrote, create a shelter for the rest of us. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

You don't have to place your hand on Mary's heart to get strength and consolation and rescue, and all the other things we need to get through life. You can place it right here on your own heart. Your own heart. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

You come from your mauma, you sleep in the bed with her till you're near twenty years grown, and you still don't know what haunches in the dark corners of her. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Violet, Kevin, the crowd, and my annoying father would all just have to wait while I ate half that torte and drank half that coffee.
Violet, however, was a multitasker. ~ Devon Monk

My music is very, very precise. It's very rigorous. The forms are much more intricate than you would imagine. ~ Meredith Monk

If you have an ancestor who is a Benedictine monk, we would rather not know it. ~ Gregory Maguire

Do you know who 'twas that first knew our Lord had caused Himself to be born? 'Twas the cock; he saw the star, and so he said–all the beasts could talk Latin in those days; he cried: 'Christus natus est!' "
He crowed these words so like a cock that Kristin fell to laughing heartily. And it did her good to laugh, for all the strange things Brother Edvin had just been saying had laid a burden of awe on her heart.
The monk laughed himself:
"Ay, and when the ox heard that, he began to low: 'Ubi, ubi, ubi.'
"But the goat bleated, and said: 'Betlem, Betlem, Betlem.'
"And the sheep so longed to see Our Lady and her Son that she baa-ed out at once: 'Eamus, eamus!'
"And the new-born calf that lay in the straw, raised itself and stood upon its feet. 'Volo, volo, volo!' it said. ~ Sigrid Undset

He whispered in the king's ear, "If you ask me, I think you should find a wife for Siddhartha. Once he has a family to occupy him, he will abandon this desire to become a monk." King Suddhodana nodded. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

I'm famous. Ain't that a bitch? ~ Thelonious Monk

People who think dying is the worst thing don't know a thing about life. My ~ Sue Monk Kidd

In both Surfing the Himalayas and Snowboarding to Nirvana, I have tried to transmit as best I could the spirit of humor, and the sense of humor of the monks I have encountered. ~ Frederick Lenz

I want to tell you I'm strong and resolute, but in truth, I feel afraid and alone and uncertain. I feel as if he has died, and I suppose in some way it's true. I'm left with nothing but this strange beating in my heart that tells me I'm meant to do something in this world. I cannot apologize for it, or for loving this small beating as much as him. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

When compassion wakes up in us, we find ourselves more willing to become vulnerable, to take the risk of entering the pain of others. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

And just as it is common to hear how, when one is in love, anything one sees reminds one of that love - our feelings remake the world in a secular equivalent of the faith that sees the hand of God in everything - so I began to find that when one is thinking on a theme, everything seems to reflect on it. Suddenly, everything I saw or read, in this girlish city of temples, seemed to take me back to the theme of the lady and the monk. ~ Pico Iyer

Life in this village is like that of a louse hanging on to a wrinkle in a loincloth. ~ Susumu Katsumata

Not setting the 'proper and accepted' religious example for them conjured up images of the bad mother, the worst mother. Yet wouldn't the example of a mother being true to her journey, taking a stand against patriarchy, and questing for spiritual meaning and wholeness, even when it meant exiting circles of orthodoxy, be a worthwhile example? ~ Sue Monk Kidd

You're the first person I've seen here who's actually dressed like a monk." "It's a bathrobe. ~ Peter Watts

I didn't know for sure whether Miss Sarah's feelings came from love or guilt. I didn't know whether mine came from love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied me. And I loved her and used her. It never was a simple thing. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Rough night?" Zay asked.
"Oh, no. Glorious, thanks. Mum had me cross-checking data on solid Veiled all damn night.Fuckin' A, there better be a shot of whiskey at the end of this damn morning."
"Nola said she'd have fresh coffee," I said.
"Whiskey. I'll say it slow: whiiiskey. ~ Devon Monk

the egrets lifting out of the marxh carrying the light on their backs. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Watch now," Handful told her. "This rabbit goes under the log, and this rabbit goes over the log. You make them hop like that all the way down. See, that's how you make a plait - hop over, hop under." Nina took possession of the rabbits and the log and created a remarkably passable braid. Handful and I oohed and ahhed as if she'd carved a Florentine statue. It was a winter evening like so many others that passed in quiet predictability: the room flushed with lamplight, a fire nesting on the grate, an early dark flattening against the windows, while my two companions fussed over me at the dresser. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

For me, writing a novel goes on for years, and the solitude goes on, too. It tends to swallow me at times. I know it's a problem when my husband sends the dog in to retrieve me. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Magic was not a required course. He could have a degree in Wiffle ball for all I knew. ~ Devon Monk

Silence will illuminate you in God ... and deliver you from phantoms of ignorance. Silence will unite you to God ... In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then from our very silence is born something that draws us into deeper silence. May God give you an experience of this 'something' that is born of silence ~ Isaac Of Nenevah

Shitbucket, hellfire, damnation, and son of a mother bitch, said Rosaleen, laying into each word like it was sweet potatoes on her tongue. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Prison life taught him how little one can get along with, and what extraordinary spiritual freedom and peace such simplification can bring. I remember again, ironically, that today more of us in the world have the luxury of choice between simplicity and complication of life. And for the most part, we, who could choose simplicity, choose complication. War, prison, survival periods, enforce a form of simplicity on us. The monk and the nun choose it of their own free will. But if one accidentally finds it, as I have for a few days, one finds also the serenity it brings. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives. They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint ... They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else's experiences or write somebody else's poems. ~ Thomas Merton

Others too would occasionally entertain and privately express such doubts; though we all had been most solemnly warned by the cruel murder of Saint Francis. ~ Maria Monk

I'm not a geius guy, even and Albert Einstein isn't and Tesla, nobody is genius. From where you will know what's the IQ for Albert or Tesla in their time there wasn't such test and how such test can show how clever are you in case that the most questions are math, physics and mainly this how this two subjects will show that you are clever or dumb?? I strongly doubt about this if I know the answer sof the test and I fill it right so I must be the world clever man? No, I don't think so - That's bullshit!
That I have written 8 books and now I'm working on some other books this doesn't make me clever, the most stuff are just search from the internet and put, the other is thoughts from me. Like thinking on some questions and that's all! ~ Deyth Banger

There are things without explanation, moments when life will become arranged in such odd ways that you imagine a whole vocabulary of meaning inside them. The breakfast smell struck me like that. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

A monk asks:Is there anything more miraculous than the wonders of nature?The master answers:Yes, your awareness of the wonders of nature. ~ Angelus Silesius

I felt like I should be wearing a sign that said "damaged" or "failure" or, at least, "injured." But some wounds only scar on the inside. Ryder ~ Devon Monk

A certain monk told me that when he was very sick, his mother said to his father, "How our little boy is suffering. I would gladly give myself to be cut up into pieces if that would ease his suffering." Such is the love of God for people. He pitied people so much that he wanted to suffer for them, like their own mother, and even more. But no one can understand this great love without the grace of the Holy Spirit. ~ Silouan The Athonite

The redness had seeped from the day and night was arranging herself around us. Cooling things down, staining and dyeing the evening purple and blue black. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

We have two kids, my wife and myself. ~ Thelonious Monk