Monastics Quotes & Sayings

To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily, one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While consumer culture speaks only to preferences, treating even whims as needs to be granted (and the sooner the better), monastics sense that this pandering to delusions of self-importance weakens the true self, and diminishes our ability to distinguish desires from needs. It's a price they're not willing to pay. — Kathleen Norris

We're going' Anne said firmly.
So soon?' Percy pleaded. 'But stars come out at night.'
Then they fade at dawn', Anne replied. 'This star needs to veil herself in darkness. — Philippa Gregory

Discipline is the quality that carries over from gymnastics to acting. — Mitch Gaylord

tables positioned — Vaseem Khan

I've always been a fan of 'Beat It,' 'You Rock My World,' and 'Smooth Criminal.' — Chord Overstreet

If you think about it, Aretha did basically the same things that I do. — Peabo Bryson

Never ask a question if you can't handle the answer. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

The disciplines of prayer, silence, and contemplation as practiced by the monastics and mystics are precisely that - stopping the noise, slowing down, and becoming still so that God can break through all our activity and noise to speak to us. Prayer serves to put all parts of our lives in God's presence, reminding us how holy our humanity really is. — Jim Wallis

There is one big misunderstanding of the monastics leaving society. — Shane Claiborne

Many a prophecy, by the mere force of its being believed, is transmuted to fact. — Isaac Asimov

You just don't know what I've been through this past year. — Chuck Palahniuk

I think I'm a really tough player. — Caroline Wozniacki

Far and away the most futile admonition Christ ever offered was when he said, 'Have no care for tomorrow. Don't worry about whether you're going to have something to eat. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, but God takes perfect care of them. Don't you think he'll do the same for you?' In our culture the overwhelming answer to that question is, 'Hell no!' Even the most dedicated monastics saw to their sowing and reaping and gathering into barns. — Daniel Quinn

The natural thing to do is to work - to recognize that prosperity and happiness can be obtained only through honest effort. — Henry Ford

What are you doing eating a salad? If you turned sideways in the wind, you'd whistle. — Lani Diane Rich

Let your memory be your travel bag. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The reality is that we are safe and we have the capacity to enjoy the wonders of life in the present moment. When we recognize that our suffering is based on images instead of current reality, then living happily in the present moment becomes possible right away. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Small-town churchgoers are often labeled hypocrites, and sometimes they are. But maybe they are also people who have learned to lived with imperfection, what Archbishop Rembert Weakland, a Benedictine, recently described as "the new asceticism." Living with people at close range over many years, as both monastics and small-town people do, is much more difficult than wearing a hair shirt. More difficult, too, I would add, than holding to the pleasant but unrealistic ideal of human perfectibility that seems to permeate much New Age thinking. — Kathleen Norris

Nothing will be left, Nothing in the air, nothing under the earth, nothing in the waters. All will be exterminated. — Leonardo Da Vinci

I was very aware that the army was here to kill something hiding out (and I think the other black folks felt this as well) not only on the mountain, but inside my heart as well. — Terry Bisson