Rule Of Benedict Quotes & Sayings

Friendship is the call out of isolation and selfishness in order to teach me how to love and how to serve. But without stability, friendship - real soul-searing friendship, the kind that makes us choose between domination and infatuation and possessiveness and dependence for growth and freedom and depth and responsibility and self-knowledge - is impossible.
Stability is what enables us, in other words, to live totally in God and totally for others. — Joan D. Chittister

Temperament is fixed, set. The skull, followed by the temperament: the two hardest parts of the body. Follow your temperament. It is not a philosophy, It is a rule, like the Rule of St Benedict. — J.M. Coetzee

Even though Christmas can be a lot of work, we all know the bustle is worth the bother. — Lady Bird Johnson

It is one thing to speak kindly to an irritating stranger on Monday. It is quite another thing to go on speaking kindly to the same irritating relative, or irritating employee, or irritating child day after day, week after week, year after year and come to see in that what God is asking of me, what God is teaching me about myself in this weary, weary moment. — Joan D. Chittister

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

Silence is a frightening thing. Silences leaves us at the mercy of the noise within us. We hear the fears that need to be faced. We hear, then, the angers that need to be cooled. We hear the emptiness that needs to be filled. We hear the cries for humility and reconciliation and centeredness. We hear ambition and arrogance and attitudes of uncaring awash in the shallows of the soul. Silence demands answers. Silence invites us to depth. Silence heals what hoarding and running will not touch. — Joan D. Chittister

The Lord called me by the way of simplicity and humility, and this way He hath shown me in truth for me and those who will believe and imitate me. And therefore I would that ye name not to me any rule, neither of St. Augustine, nor St. Benedict, nor of Bernard, nor any way or form of living, but that which was mercifully shown and given me by the Lord. — Francis Of Assisi

New Rule: Let the Pope be Pope. An animal-rights group in Italy has asked Pope Benedict to give up his fur-trimmed cape and hat. To which the Pope replied, "Don't be hatin' on my cape, bitch." Sorry, but Popes are the original divas, they invented bling, they've been wearing outlandish outfits for a thousand years
almost as long as Elton John. The clothes, the jewels, the fancy palace ... Those aren't just symbols of the Papacy, they are the Papacy. The day the Pope shows up on the balcony in a pair of jeans and polo shirt is the day a billion Catholics go, "What the hell were we thinking? — Bill Maher

Let us say plainly: the unredeemed state of the world consists precisely in the failure to understand the meaning of creation, in the failure to recognize truth; as a result, the rule of pragmatism is imposed, by which the strong arm of the powerful becomes the god of this world. — Pope Benedict XVI

The only rule is that there are no rules. — Del Close

Everyone asks me how I get my subjects to open up to me. There's no formula to it. It's just a matter of who you are and how you talk to people - of being yourself. — Mary Ellen Mark

The biggest challenge of Gods people is ignorance. Ignorance has become a mountain and a stronghold even in Christian churches — Sunday Adelaja

Run while you have the light of life, that the darkness of death may overtake you not." (Rule of St. Benedict)) — Frances Greenslade

As a general rule anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice [ ... ] — Benedict Jacka

As
Vargas Llosa has said, "Democracy is an event that provokes yawns in the countries in which rule of law exists."49 — Pope Benedict XVI

Fears of the brave and follies of the wise. — Samuel Johnson

One of the functions of leadership is to lead, and weak managers may simply check and check and check with others because they are not capable of leading when it is required of them to lead. Benedict says that in matters of importance the abbot or prioress is to ask everyone in the community, 'starting with the youngest,' and then the abbot or prioress is to 'do what seems best. — Joan D. Chittister

But even though catastrophic oppression brought about a process of objectification and dehumanization, the absolute negation of humanity was not possible because a damaged human spirit seeks to resurrect and reconstruct itself; it also seeks self-consciousness. — Clovis E. Semmes

War within ourselves is always a prelude to war outside ourselves. All war starts within our own hearts. When our egos are inflated or our desires insatiable, we go to war with the other for the sad joy of maintaining our one-dimensional worlds. — Joan D. Chittister

Benedict sets up a community, a family. And families, the honest among us will admit, are risky places to be if perfection is what y ou are expecting in life. — Joan D. Chittister

A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude — Rainer Maria Rilke

First, she dreamed of little Alice herself, and once again the tiny hands were clasped upon her knee, and the bright eager eyes were looking up into hers
she could hear the very tones of her voice, and see that queer little toss of her head to keep back the wandering hair that would always get into her eyes
and still as she listened, or seemed to listen, the whole place around her became alive the strange creatures of her little sister's dream. — Lewis Carroll

It is a maxim that no man was ever enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free. — Samuel Johnson

I got really frustrated in jail, and I was like, 'Man, I love what I've done, and I love the mark I've made on rock n' roll history' ... and I sat there, and I got really depressed, thinking, 'I gotta make a move ... do something fresh and new.' — Tommy Lee