Quotes About Asceticism

Alternatively, perfection might be regarded as the absence of all unnecessary things, and the pleasures of an ascetic life.

A saying from the Desert Fathers reads: "It is frightening to die, it is even more perilous to live a long life." If only pessimism had the devotion of the ascetics.

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

A number of the keepers of knowledge, myself included, put little store in asceticism. How can the spirit soar freely if we keep our bodies in chains?

I think that in all descriptions of the good life here on earth we must assume a certain basis of animal vitality and animal instinct; without this, life becomes tame and uninteresting. Civilization should be something added to this, not substituted for it; the ascetic saint and the detached sage fail in this respect to be complete human beings. A small number of them may enrich a community; but a world composed of them would die of boredom.

only a foolish asceticism, usually vicarious, makes us continue to insist on work in excessive quantities now that the need no longer exists.

Of all forms of love, paranoia is the most ascetic, the love that demands least from its object.

It was the face of a nonreligious ascetic, capable of enduring hardship and pain beyond what most men would even want to contemplate, a true believer in other people's causes, a curious combination of scholar and man of action, and, most important of all, a dreamer.

In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times, who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle; in him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads;

I shaved my hair. I wore robes. I slept on the floor. We meditated for four to eight hours a day.

Particularly in the East, in the fourth and fifth centuries, dirtiness became a uniquely Christian badge of holiness. This particular mortification of the flesh was known as alousia, "the state of being unwashed," and was largely chosen by hermits, monks and saints.

It is in these dark, intense, and lonely times that ascetics' souls awaken. I think that anyone who has been stretched in ministry knows that the real battle was fought at Gethsemane, not Calvary. To be sure, only Calvary provided payment for our sins and thus was absolutely necessary, but Gethsemane was the real spiritual battleground where Jesus made the final decision to be obedient. In a wrenching, courageous act of self-denial, Jesus proved the mettle of his faith.

It is this strict side of the ascetic's life that is perhaps the least understood, not only by our culture, but also by other Christians. Especially among evangelicals, who champion salvation by grace through faith, a strict faith can seem perilously close to legalism; and in some cases, it might be. For healthy ascetics, however, strictness is a cherished method of expressing love for God.

That clerical celibacy doesn't guarantee asceticism is obvious, any more than attending Mass guarantees prayerfulness (trust me on that one). But it preserves the call even when the system is corrupted.

My religion: Very seldom do I feel a need for the presence of God. I don't pray and I don't know how to pray. When I enter a church, I try to pray, but I can't tell if I succeed or not. But often I have religious "attacks": the desire for isolation, for contemplation far from other people. Despair. The desire (and the hope) for asceticism.

También nosotros somos llamados a ello, a través de aquel martirio interior que es la «compunción» - como la llamaba la tradición ascética y mística-, es decir, el corazón que se deja traspasar por el pecado de la humanidad, porque «el Amor no es amado», porque «Dios no es conocido», porque «Cristo es ofendido».

shaking people up." Finally, art was for both of them not an end in itself but a way of achieving an ascetic renunciation of the world. "Art should be given the chance to phase itself out," Gould

Cultivate the art of renunciation.

Christianity is not stoicism. The Cross does not sanctify us by destroying human feeling. Detachment is not insensibility. Too many ascetics fail to become great saints precisely because their rules and ascetic practices have merely deadened their humanity instead of setting it free to develop richly, in all its capacities, under the influence of grace.

Hope is the living heart of asceticism. It teaches us to deny ourselves and leave the world not because either we or the world are evil, but because unless a supernatural hope raises us above the things of time we are in no condition to make a perfect use either of our own or of the world's true goodness. But

In many ways, airplane travel mimics the asceticism of the early desert monks: a limited and uncomfortable physical space in which to sit, limited availability of water, food that is less than appetizing, small chance of getting much sleep.

Real renunciation is not self-deprivation or asceticism. If it were, many masochists would qualify as spiritual people. True spirituality is an affirmation of life and not a negation of it. The main point is to have equal love for all.

Under the dominion of the priests our earth became the ascetic planet; a squalid den careering through space, peopled by discontented and arrogant creatures, who were disgusted with life, abhorred their globe as a vale of tears, and who in their envy and hatred of beauty and joy did themselves as much harm as possible.

She had dreamed of a separated man, a sad austere secluded man, a man with a great sorrow, an ascetic. She was a moth that wanted to be burnt by a cold cold flame.