Quotes About Asceticism

Sodom and Madonna-ism are two halves of the same movement, the mere tick-tack of lust and asceticism, pietism and pornography.

Chasing waves in a dedicated way was both profoundly egocentric and selfless, dynamic and ascetic, radical in its rejection of the values of duty and conventional achievement.

For the standard of Christian life was to be strained to a higher pitch; more fasting was required, and more careful separation from the manners and enjoyments of the world; celibacy and martyrdom had great value set upon them, and second marriages were prohibited.

In the Church, bodily asceticism has always been the supreme road to theological knowledge. It is not possible for man to come to know the truth of life, the truth of God and the truth of his own existence purely through intellectual categories...

Hail, arch-ascetic, pious, good, and kind! Hail, Saint Válmíki, lord of every lore! Hail, holy Hermit, calm and pure of mind! Hail, First of Bards, Válmíki, hail once more!

But, as the ninth-century cultural critic Jahiz wrote, `Some people who affect asceticism and self denial are uneasy and embarrassed when cunt, cock and fucking are mentioned but most men you find like that are without knowledge, honour, nobility or dignity.'2 I have certainly not played up these features of the narrative,

When prayer, rituals and ascetic life are just a means of self-indulgence, they are harmful rather than beneficial. This is quite obvious to people nowadays, when it is widely recognised that fixations are not the same as valuable and laudable observances. One should not pray if that prayer is vanity; rituals are wrong when they provide lower satisfactions, like emotional stimulus instead of enlightenment; he or she should not be an ascetic who is only enjoying it.

When prayer, rituals and ascetic life are just a means of self-indulgence, they are harmful rather than beneficial.

Cuando oración, rituales y vida ascética son solo los medios para la autoindulgencia, son más dañinos que beneficiosos.

Saadi: Sé un verdadero renunciador (zahid) e incluso podrás usar raso.

All art is, indeed, a monotony in external things for the sake of an interior variety, a sacrifice of gross effects to subtle effects, an asceticism of the imagination.

The unwedded and ascetic life is the direct way to the heavenly, immortal life, for heaven is nothing else than life liberated from the conditions of the species, supernatural, sexless, absolutely subjective life.

Because monks come from the midst of purity, they consider as good and pure what does not arouse desire among other people.

Rational conduct on the basis of the idea of calling, was born... from the spirit of Christian asceticism.

For the preservation of chastity, an empty and rumbling stomach and fevered lungs are indispensable.

To weigh three hundred pounds. What devout vulgarity. It seemed a worthwhile goal for prospective saints and flagellants. The new asceticism. All the visionary possibilities of the fast. To feed on the plants and animals of earth. To expand and wallow. I cherished his size, the formlessness of it, the sheer vulgar pleasure, his sense of being overwritten prose. Somehow it was the opposite of death.

A clear rule for self-control handed down by the Fathers is this: stop eating while still hungry and do not continue until you are satisfied.

A pale, thin, small woman, perfectly coiffed, perfectly dressed, without makeup, without a single piece of jewelry, ascetic (viperous?) (her heart sullied by the world's contagion?) stands beside Eduardo, making him gigantic: she smiles mechanically.

By definition, the monastic way was designed precisely to allow creatures of the earth to rise toward a purer spirituality.

The ascetism of early Christianity, which turned its back on the world of the flesh, had degrenerated, in some quarters of the Church, into hatred of those who those who brought that flesh into being. Misogyny, the hatred of women, had become a strong element in medieval Christianity. Women who menstruate, and give birth, were identified with sexuality and therefore with evil. All witchcraft stems from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable, stated the Malleus Maleficarum.

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.

The radical elimination of magic from the world allowed no other psychological course than the practice of worldly asceticism. Since

Impulsive enjoyment of life, which leads away both from work in a calling and from religion, was as such the enemy of rational asceticism, whether in the form of seigneurial sports, or the enjoyment of the dance-hall or the public—house of the common man. 

Rational conduct on the basis of the idea of calling, was born... from the spirit of Christian asceticism.