Think Like A Monk Quotes & Sayings

When it's time to die, go ahead and die, and when it's time to live, live. Don't sort-of-maybe live, but live like you're going all out, like you're not afraid. — Sue Monk Kidd

More than once, while staring at the wall, I'd thought of Our Lady. I wanted to talk to her, to say, Where do I go from here? But when I'd seen her earlier, when August and I had first come in, she didn't look like she could be of service to anybody, bound up with all that chain around her. You want the one you're praying to at least to look capable. I dragged myself out of bed and went to see her anyway. I decided that even Mary did not need to be one hundred percent capable all the time. The only thing I wanted was for her to understand. Somebody to let out a big sigh and say, You poor thing, I know how you feel. Given a choice, I preferred someone to understand my situation, even though she was helpless to fix it, rather than the other way around. But that's just me. Right — Sue Monk Kidd

We didn't like each other when you were alive," I muttered to my father. "You think living in my head is going to change that? — Devon Monk

The hermit Anthony once told me that a monk is like a fish: take him out of his element and he dies. Silence is his element. In silence you can trade this shoddy world for Heaven. — Gillian Bradshaw

Where did you learn to kiss like that?" I said, a little breathless. He grinned and pulled me close again.
"I said I was a virgin, not a monk," he said, kissing me again. "If I find I need guidance, I'll ask. — Diana Gabaldon

I feel like we need to be aware of the ways we use and misuse religious dogma: whether it takes us deeper into love and inclusion or it separates us. — Sue Monk Kidd

Aspirin? I asked. It came out sounding a lot like ass spoon, but Zayvion seemed fluent in mumbleze. — Devon Monk

A slave was supposed to be like the Holy Ghost - don't see it, don't hear it, but it's always hovering round on ready. — Sue Monk Kidd

The life of a chess master is much more difficult than that of an artist - much more depressing. An artist knows that someday there'll be recognition and monetary reward, but for the chess master there is little public recognition and absolutely no hope of supporting himself by his endeavors. If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him - as if anyone could - but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted. — Marcel Duchamp

I felt tears sting into my eyes, and took a deep swallow of the first champagne I had ever tasted, remembering that I had read somewhere that the monk who invented it said, on first tasting it, 'It is like drinking stars'. — Anne Rivers Siddons

Resist nothing. Like the Tibetan monk who once told me that he found peace by saying yes to all that happened. I met him again years later and reminded him of what he'd said. He laughed. "Perhaps," he said. "It does fit with my life philosophy." He had a lightness to him that is rare. His laugh, genuine. I almost expected him to levitate. If you think about it, how much time do we spend in our heads wishing things were another way, beating ourselves up, beating others up, crafting a different past, wishing for a different future? All of that is resistance. All of that is pain. Peace is letting it be. Letting life flow, letting emotions flow through you. If you don't fight them, they pass through quickly and you feel better. — Kamal Ravikant

Horseshit," Shame said cheerfully. "He can dispossess you and die. Pretty easy, really. Most people die the right way the first time. You'd think a genius like him wouldn't screw it up so badly. — Devon Monk

The concept of minimalism is to relax. Like a Zen monk in training, it is something that brings equilibrium to the heart. I don't necessarily think it has any problems, but if I were to force myself to name one, I would say that since the minimalist feeling already includes its own universe, I think it might kill the drive that we would otherwise have to commit the physically impossible and attempt to travel into outer space. — Takashi Murakami

You don't move like a human," Irawondona said.

"And you fight surprisingly well for a talking brideeth."

The reaction on Irawondona's face was immediate. His happy grin vanished.

Arista looked to Myron.

"I don't know that word," the monk replied.

"I wouldn't think you would," Royce said. "I taught him that one. — Michael J. Sullivan

Long aprons with starch. Off in the drawing room, it sounded like bees buzzing. Missus showed — Sue Monk Kidd

The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe. Unfortunately — Douglas Adams

If I wear bright colors or something, I'll tie all my hair back. I don't want to look too like 'Girls Next Door.' — Sophie Monk

From the outside, my life may look chaotic, but inside I feel like some kind of monk licking an ice cream cone while straddling a runaway horse. — Tom Robbins

I'm trying to use people like Meredith Monk and Philip Glass and Terry Riley as the backing tracks for new pop songs. It's really hard trying to use the format and write a pop song on top of avant-garde music, so we'll see. It could be cool, or it could totally flop. — Autre Ne Veut

The man lived like a monk.
And made love like a sinner. — Cindy Gerard

But even in the unglamorous warp of the peephole, she looked like a million sunny days to me. — Devon Monk

Already that morning missus had taken her cane stick to me once cross my backside for falling asleep during her devotions. Every day, all us slaves, everyone but Rosetta, who was old and demented, jammed in the dining room before breakfast to fight off sleep while missus taught us short Bible verses like "Jesus wept" and prayed out loud about God's favorite subject, obedience. If you nodded off, you got whacked right in the middle of God said this and God said that. — Sue Monk Kidd

I hadn't been out to the hives before, so to start off she gave me a lesson in what she called 'bee yard etiquette'. She reminded me that the world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don't be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don't be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don't swat. Don't even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee's temper. Act like you know what you're doing, even if you don't. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved. — Sue Monk Kidd

I'm not a geius guy, even and Albert Einstein isn't and Tesla, nobody is genius. From where you will know what's the IQ for Albert or Tesla in their time there wasn't such test and how such test can show how clever are you in case that the most questions are math, physics and mainly this how this two subjects will show that you are clever or dumb?? I strongly doubt about this if I know the answer sof the test and I fill it right so I must be the world clever man? No, I don't think so - That's bullshit!
That I have written 8 books and now I'm working on some other books this doesn't make me clever, the most stuff are just search from the internet and put, the other is thoughts from me. Like thinking on some questions and that's all! — Deyth Banger

But being a monk is just one more impossible thing, like traveling to the past or having Finn here forever, because to be a monk you'd have to be a man and you'd also have to believe in God, neither of which was ever going to happen. I don't think God would create a disease just to kill people like Finn, and if he did, then there's no way I'd ever even consider worshipping him. — Carol Rifka Brunt

All Julie has to do is explain to her friends that she's using it to individually seal each item that she throws out."
"Then they'd think she was a geek," I said.
"She will thank me later," Monk said.
"Why would she thank you for being considered a geek?"
"Don't you know anything about teenage life?" Monk said. "It's a badge of respect."
"It is?"
"I was one," he said.
"You don't say."
"A very special one. I was crowned King of the Geeks, not once, but every single year of high school," Monk said. "It's a record that remains unbroken in my school to this day."
"Were there a lot of students who wanted to be King of the Geeks?"
"It's like being homecoming king, only better. You don't have to go to any dances," Monk said. "You aren't even invited. — Lee Goldberg

It sounds to me, dear, as if your satirist is a bit like a monk. They both take a rather dim view of the world, and both try to do something about it."

"Thank you, Father Joe! I think I knew that once, but I'd forgotten. Contemptus mundi. We both have contempt for the world."

"You p-p-persist in your error, my son. Contemptus does not mean 'contempt.' It means 'detachment.' Are you detached from the things you satirize? — Tony Hendra

Perhaps I should have been one [some sort of a professional religious]; I like to think a monk notable for his austerities, the voice of one crying in the wilderness; but more probably a tiresome Unitarian in Walsall who writes incessantly to the local paper. — Malcolm Muggeridge

She reminded me that the world was really one big bee yard, and the same rules worked fine in both places: Don't be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don't be an idiot; wear long sleeves and long pants. Don't swat. Don't even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates, while whistling melts a bee's temper. Act like you know what you're doing, even if you don't. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved. August had been stung so many times she had — Sue Monk Kidd

I think I would like to be a monk. I really considered Catholicism a few years ago, but there were some things that I just couldn't reconcile. — Rich Mullins

The first thing I think about is music, and the last thing I think about is music. I'm like some Monk. I don't see a lot of daylight. I hang out with musicians, I hang out with directors and I just try to spend as much of my life as possible playing music. — Hans Zimmer

I had got where I talked to her all the time. Like I would say, I didn't hear her talk back, so I hadn't lost my sanities. — Sue Monk Kidd

I like vampires, tuberculosis, anything to do with blood. Then I read a biography of Rasputin and found out he'd had this daughter who had become a famous lion tamer and been billed as the daughter of the mad monk who was able to hypnotize animals with her eyes. It gave me a vision. — Kathryn Harrison

I marveled at how mixed up people got when it came to love. I myself, for instance. It seemed like I was now thinking of Zach forty minutes out of every hour, Zach, who was an impossibility. That's what I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log throw on the fires of love. — Sue Monk Kidd

We are all like the clay Buddha covered with a shell of hardness created out of fear, and yet underneath each of us is a 'golden Buddha' a 'golden Christ' or a 'golden essence,' which is our real self....Much like the monk with the hammer and the chisel, our task now is to discover our true essence once again. — Jack Canfield

I like Thelonious Monk, he's so gnarled, he's like a piece of machinery that's pulled up the bolts on the floor and gone off on its own. — Tom Waits

August: You know, somethings don't matter that much ... like the color of a house ... But lifting a person's heart
now that matters. The whole problem with people

Lily: They don't know what matters and what doesn't ...
August: ... They know what matters, but they don't choose it ... The hardest thing on earth is to choose what matters. — Sue Monk Kidd

Free of all responsibility or restraint, in the sheer obliviousness of dreams, he had lived like a happy pagan; and now he must go back to the drear existence of a mediaeval monk, beneath the prompting of an obscure sense of duty. — H.P. Lovecraft

One day I saw a picture of the Buddha on a Buddhist magazine and he was sitting on the grass, and he was sitting on the grass, very peaceful, smiling, and I was impressed. Around me people were not like that, so I had the desire to be someone like him. I nourished that kind of desire until the age of sixteen, when I had the permission from my parents to go and ordain as a Buddhist monk. — Nhat Hanh

My life has been about living like a monk and looking like a priest so that people will come up to me and tell me their most appalling stories. They have to make their confession to somebody, and it might as well be me. — Chuck Palahniuk

Sarah shifted on the bench. I worried she was winding up to say something, that Sky would start humming now, that the fright spring-coiled inside me would break loose. Then I remembered the widow dress I was wearing. I made a sound with my lips like I was trying to give him an answer, but choking on the words, seized by my grief, and I didn't have to pretend that much. I felt sorrow for my life, for what I'd lived and seen and known, for what was lost to me, and the weeping turned real. — Sue Monk Kidd

Trying to explain music is like trying to dance architecture. — Thelonious Monk

I would like to be free of the part of me that dares too little and fears too much. — Sue Monk Kidd

He rolled his tongue around in his mouth and made a sour face. "Got any gum? Mints?"
"No. You going to hark again?" He shook his head. "Mouth tastes like the bottom of my shoe." I didn't ask him how he knew that particular flavor. — Devon Monk

The mermaids came to me finally, in the pink hours of my life. They are my consolation. For them I dove with arms outstretched, my life streaming out behind me, a leap against all proprieties and expectations, but a leap that was somehow saving and necessary. How can I ever explain or account for that? I dove, and a pair of invisible arms simply appeared, unstinting arms, like the musculature of grace suddenly revealing itself. They caught me after I hit the water, bearing me not to the surface but to the bottom, and only then pulling me up. — Sue Monk Kidd

I live like a monk: with one toothbrush, one cake of soap, and a pot of cream. — Greta Garbo

As for poetry 'belonging' in the classroom, it's like the way they taught us sex in those old hygiene classes: not performance but semiotics. If it I had taken Hygiene 71 seriously, I would have become a monk; & if I had taken college English seriously, I would have become an accountant. — Jerome Rothenberg

I have a fondness for historical fiction, something wondrous like 'Wolf Hall,' but I'll read most anything as long as the story grabs my mind or my heart, and preferably both. You would be hard pressed, however, to find science fiction on my shelves. — Sue Monk Kidd

Watch now," Handful told her. "This rabbit goes under the log, and this rabbit goes over the log. You make them hop like that all the way down. See, that's how you make a plait - hop over, hop under." Nina took possession of the rabbits and the log and created a remarkably passable braid. Handful and I oohed and ahhed as if she'd carved a Florentine statue. It was a winter evening like so many others that passed in quiet predictability: the room flushed with lamplight, a fire nesting on the grate, an early dark flattening against the windows, while my two companions fussed over me at the dresser. — Sue Monk Kidd

For me, a male image that I'm really moved by is somewhere between of Oscar Wilde type of a male: the fop, the long hair, the suits, too witty for his own good, incredibly smart, scathingly funny - all that. But then my other ideal is more like the Buddhist monk - the shaved head, actually someone who sublimates their sexuality. — Madonna Ciccone

How does the Authority usually handle storms like this?"
"Not well. — Devon Monk

Asceticism for St. Anthony and others like him was never the end, only the means. Ward explains, "The aim of the monk's life was not asceticism, but God. It was important to follow Christ's example, to help the poor and sick, and to love the neighbor. — Norris J Chumley

I'd say, Jesus wept cause he's trapped in there with missus, like us. — Sue Monk Kidd

I felt like I should be wearing a sign that said "damaged" or "failure" or, at least, "injured." But some wounds only scar on the inside. Ryder — Devon Monk

I had sometimes met guys who looked like they worked out a lot; however, overly conservative social boundaries had restrained me from tearing their shirts open in public to check the goods. — Camilla Monk

But I really want to be an artist, so therefore I have to live a little bit like a monk. — John Lone