Monastic Communities Quotes & Sayings

Stand up for what is right even if you stand alone. — Suzy Kassem

Hospitality is a prized virtue of monastic communities. Benedict's rule says: 'All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say, "I was a stranger and you welcomed me."' Brother Alphonsus served as a doorkeeper in the seventeenth century at a Jesuit college in Majorca, Spain. Each time someone knocked at the door he would reply, 'I am coming, Lord!' This practice reminded him to treat each person with as much respect as if it were Jesus himself at the door. — Ken Shigematsu

How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible — C.S. Lewis

Monastic communities are to the great social community what the mistletoe is to the oak, what the wart is to the human body. — Victor Hugo

The whole point is that writing has a pattern and life hasn't. Life is so untidy. Art is so short and life so long. It is not possible to have perfection in life but it is possible to have perfection in a novel. — Elizabeth Taylor

There are some who affect a want of affectation, and flatter themselves that they are above flattery; they are proud of being thought extremely humble, and would go round the world to punish those who thought them capable of revenge; they are so satisfied of the suavity of their own temper that they would quarrel with their dearest benefactor only for doubting it. — Charles Caleb Colton

I haven't been unfaithful, well only when I was younger! — Lee Ryan

As life goes on I'm learning to trust myself more, so I am more comfortable - you have to be, doing things in front of people, especially when there's lots of pressure. I have to make decisions. — Tyler Blackburn

For a lot of people, becoming an author is a change in occupation ... they are coming from something that totally has nothing to do with this. If they are expecting to come into a room full of people praising them, then they are in the wrong place. — Eric Jerome Dickey

In the blackest pits, or emptiest of voids, there is always a guiding light; it's just up to us to find it. — Robert Storey

I never sleep comfortably except when I am at sermon or when I pray to God. — Francois Rabelais

THE ADVENTURE OF THE CREEPING MAN — Arthur Conan Doyle

Flatter not thyself in thy faith in God if thou hast not charity for thy neighbor. — Francis Quarles

From the point of view of history, of reason, and of truth, monasticism is condemned. Monasteries, when they abound in a nation, are clogs in its circulation, cumbrous establishments, centres of idleness where centres of labor should exist. Monastic communities are to the great social community what the mistletoe is to the oak, what the wart is to the human body. Their prosperity and their fatness mean the impoverishment of the country. The monastic regime, good at the beginning of civilization, useful in the reduction of the brutal by the spiritual, is bad when peoples have reached their manhood. — Victor Hugo

The instinctive attraction of the daughters of high society to noble ideals was probably reinforced by an idea that, in dedicating themselves to the Church, they could escape the sometimes grim realities of marriage. It was not only the problem of volatile husbands raised in a society that prized aggressive masculinity and constant pregnancy; there was also the painful fact that only a few of the numerous babies would survive to adulthood. Against these harsh realities, the new monastic communities offered an appealing alternative, a rigid but somehow delicious atmosphere similar to that of a girls' boarding school. To a virgin, this must have seemed attractive, and to a teenage Roman widow weighing the dangers of a second marriage, it must have seemed positively utopian. And, of course, there was the chance to do good work. We should not underestimate the delight that these women found in being able to pool their resources in trying to better the lot of the city's poor. — Kate Cooper

Abundance isn't God's provision for me to live in luxury. It's his provision for me to help others live. God entrusts me with his money not to build my kingdom on earth, but to build his kingdom in heaven. — Randy Alcorn

When you have the right habits, okay, certain good things will come to you, and that's what life is about. — Andrew Cherng

It was true what they said: The older you become, the more you are like your parents. Soon he'd be telling a kid not to stick his elbow out the car window or he'd lose it. — Harlan Coben