Quotes About Monastic

I love talking the way Trappists love silence.

Si mai era ceva, un amanunt care m-a obsedat apoi multa vreme: mana intreaga parea goala, degetele acelea palide si nervoase erau parca facute anume ca sa poarte un inel, si inelul acesta le lipsea. Era o mana pura, nelogodita, monahala...

We all worked, but we didn't work all day. There was time for us to study the sutras, practice writing, listen to the teachings given by our teacher, chant, and meditate. Most important was meditation. My teacher taught that meditation was the door to understanding, and the career of monks and nuns.

In truth, they were all admirable scholars, the masters who taught in the cloisters of the old school — once a monastic foundation — under the guidance of a kindly, snuff-taking old head. They were, to a man, well-meaning and sweet- humoured; and they were one in the belief that knowledge and good cheer are not mutually exclusive.

To separate meditation from prayer, reading and contemplation is to falsify our picture of the monastic way of prayer. In proportion as meditation takes on a more contemplative character, we see that it is not only a means to an end, but also has something of the nature of an end.

Meditation for them consisted in making the words of the Bible their own by memorizing them and repeating them, with deep and simple concentration, "from the heart." Therefore the "heart" comes to play a central role in this primitive form of monastic prayer.

kind of prayer we here speak of as properly "monastic" (though it may also fit into the life of any lay person who is attracted to it) is a prayer of silence, simplicity, contemplative and meditative unity, a deep personal integration in an attentive, watchful listening of "the heart.

Monastic people have long known--and I've experienced it in a small way myself--that the communal reciting, chanting, and singing of the psalms brings a unique sense of wholeness and order to their day, and even establishes the rhythm of their lives.

I often see it in people who have attained what the monastic tradition terms "detachment," an ability to live at peace with the reality of whatever happens. Such people do not have a closed-off air, nor a boastful demeanor. In them, it is clear, their wounds have opened the way to compassion for others. And compassion is the strength and soul of a religion.

In our culture, time can seem like an enemy....But the monastic perspective welcomes time as a gift from God and seeks to put it to good use rather than allowing us to be used up by it.....Liturgical time is essentially poetic time, oriented toward process rather than productivity, willing to wait attentively in stillness, rather than always pushing to get the job done

This issue is so important to Stephenson that he went on to explore its implications—positive and negative—in his 2008 science fiction epic, Anathem, which considers a world where an intellectual elite live in monastic orders, isolated from the distracted masses and technology, thinking deep thoughts.)

I always thought if I was born 2000 years earlier, I would be a monk, probably carving a monastery or some giant pantheon buildings.

My own schooldays convince me that I would not send a child of mine to be educated by a grinning monk any more than I would send him to a mullah in Iran.

Mount Carmel was a very monastic place. We lived in another time - an easier time, a better time. We didn't have running water or most modern conveniences. But in a lot of ways, it was a very satisfying life.

In other words, to see if through these cultural phenomena a new Middle Ages is to take shape, a time of secular mystics, more inclined to monastic withdrawal than to civic participation. We should see how much, as antidote or as antistrophe, the old techniques of reason may apply, the arts of the Trivium, logic, dialectic, rhetoric. As we suspect that anyone who goes on stubbornly practicing them will be accused of impiety.

of knowledge is for monks.

Los jedi de antaño eran tramposos y mentirosos. Maniacos hambrientos de poder que operaban bajo el disfraz de orden monástico santo. Defensores de la moral, cuya diplomacia era el uso del sable de luz.

Thomas Merton stayed at the abbey for twenty-seven years. His autobiography

It was perfectly amazing, the way her mere presence seemed to wipe speech from my lips—and mine, for that matter, from hers. It began to look as if our married life together would be rather like twenty years among the Trappist monks.

One of the best characteristics of the Tibetan people is their complete tolerance of other creeds. Their monastic theocracy has never sought the conversion of infidels.

The Oratorian boarding school in Vendôme, which Balzac was sent to at a young age. It was a gruelling and miserable place to live, with severe monastic rules.

worshipped was that of Mammon. It is difficult to estimate the size of monastic occupation. At the time it was believed that the clergy owned one third of the land, but it may be safe to presume that the monks controlled one sixth of English territory.

Reading was closely connected with eating; it was food for the soul. As food nourished physical life, reading nourished prayer. Hence, public reading during meals is a very ancient monastic custom. The reading that the members of a community heard in common, at meals and at other times, helped give them their unique culture.

You can't keep quiet about anything that's going on in the world, unless you're a monk. Sorry, monks! I didn't mean it!