Asceticism is not that you should not own anything, but that nothing should own you. — Ali ibn Abi Talib
Self restraint in speech, food, entertainment and vanity are the most essential fundamental of spiritual growth. — Nouman Ali Khan
Renounce to the desire of possessing worldly things: this is the first step in the path of perfection; by mean of this absolute untie is how the passions can be fought. — Eliphas Levi
Lack of ornamentation is a sign of spiritual strength. — Adolf Loos
Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires. — Lao Tzu
Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic. — Bertrand Russell
When you reach your sixties, you have to decide whether you're going to be a sot or an ascetic. In other words if you want to go on working after you're sixty, some degree of asceticism is inevitable. — Malcolm Muggeridge
It is useless to subdue the flesh by abstinence, unless one gives up his irregular life, and abandons vices which defile his soul. — Benedict of Nursia
Austerity is an ornament, humility is honorable. — Indian Proverbs
Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation. — Saint Augustine
Separation to God, separation from the world, is the first principle of Christian living. — Watchman Nee
Affliction is a school of virtue; it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning. — Francis Atterbury
Short Asceticism Quotes
Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. — Karl Marx
Genuine asceticism for finding one's own soul and for the good of humanity is worthy of reverence. — Rama Swami
Renounce all things, and thou shalt find all things; give up thy lust, and thou shalt find rest. — Thomas a Kempis
However weighed down and entangled in earthly fetters you may be, it can never be too late. — Tito Colliander
Fie on the eloquence that leaves us craving itself, not things! — Michel de Montaigne
Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease. — William James
The saints' deep secret is this: do not seek freedom, and freedom will be given you. — Tito Colliander
Faith comes not through pondering but through action. — Tito Colliander
Dieting is our last tie with asceticism. — Mason Cooley
Asceticism without religion is just another way of cultivating peculiar sensations. — Mason Cooley
Asceticism Image Quotes
Ascetic Quotes
Bliss in depletion. I finally got it. It's that beautiful place of ascetic purity that is permitted to bloom only when the mind is stopped dead in its tracks and everything else is stripped away, leaving your soul--or who you really are--to forge a connection with the truth. — Rich Roll
During a chess tournament a master must envisage himself as a cross between an ascetic monk and a beast of prey. — Alexander Alekhine
Fashions pass quickly, and nothing is more pathetic than those puppets of fashion outrageously made up one day, pale the next, pleated or ironed stiff, libertine or ascetic. Playing with fashion is an art. The first rule is don't burn your wings. — Yves Saint Laurent
I like prostitution. My heart has never failed to pound at the sight of one of those provocatively dressed women walking in the rain under the gaslamps, just as the sight of monks in their robes and girdles touches some ascetic, hidden corner of my soul. — Gustave Flaubert
I think one of the things you and I have to learn is that we have to live without the consolation of belonging to a Church.... Of one thing I am certain. The religion of the future will have to be extremely ascetic, and by that I don't mean just going without food and drink. — Ludwig Wittgenstein
Neither my life of luxury in the palace -nor- my life as ascetic in the forest were ways to enlightenment. — Buddha
Yet in a kingdom containing seven constituent parts, which is upheld like the triple staff ,of an ascetic , there is no ,single part more important ,than the others , by reason of the importance of the qualities of each for the others. — Guru Nanak
We were preparing not Peace only, but Eternal Peace. There was about us the halo of some divine mission. We must be alert, stern, righteous and ascetic. For we were bent on doing great, permanent and noble things. — Harold Nicolson
He who, though dressed in fine apparel, exercises tranquillity, is quiet, subdued, restrained, chaste, and has ceased to find fault with all other beings, he indeed is an ascetic. — Max Muller
I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha." He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time. — Hermann Hesse
American life, in large cities, is a perpetual assault on the senses and the nerves; it is out of asceticism, out of unworldliness, precisely, that we bear it. — Joseph McCarthy
The dunyâ distracts and preoccupies the heart and body, but al-zuhd (asceticism, not giving importance to worldly things) gives rest to the heart and body. Verily, Allâh will ask us about the halâl things we enjoyed, so what about the harâm! — Hasan of Basra
Give up a member to save a family, a family to save a village, a village to save a country, and the country to save yourself. — Vyasa
Out of the doctrine of original sin grew the crimes and miseries of asceticism, celibacy and witchcraft; woman becoming the helpless victim of all these delusions. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton
I never did calligraphy... But handwriting is an entirely different kind of thing. It's part of the syndrome of modernism... It's part of that asceticism. — Paul Rand
The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, as instinct. — Friedrich Nietzsche
The beauty of a cuckoo is in its notes, that of a woman in her unalloyed devotion to her husband, that of an ugly person in his scholarship, and that of an ascetic in his forgiveness. — Chanakya
The ascetic remembrance of death is opposed to akedia, to anxiety, to depression, and becomes a powerful reminder of eternity, its joyful nostalgia. — Paul Evdokimov
The cacophony of contemporary popular culture makes it hard to discern the call of truth and wisdom. There is no area in which practicing asceticism is more important. — Rod Dreher
Asceticism in most cases is either the result of a sordid imagination or of passion diverted from its natural course, and experience has shown that when the protection of public morals is entrusted to its votaries, the consequences are usually appalling. — Rudolf Rocker
To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only Him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self-denial can say is, 'He leads the way, keep close to Him.' — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The simplicity that all this presupposes is not easy to attain. I find that my life constantly threatens to become complex and divisive. A life of prayer is basically a very simple life. This simplicity, however, is the result of asceticism and effort: it is not a spontaneous simplicity. — Thomas Merton
Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last. — Florence Nightingale
It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Mastering our emotions has nothing to do with asceticism or repression, for the purpose is not to break the emotions or deny them but to "break in" the emotions, making them teachable because they are tamed. — Os Guinness
We notice the person who is for ever bowing and fussily servile, and perhaps say, How humble he is! But the truly humble person escapes notice: the world does not know him. — Tito Colliander
It is precisely our egoism, our self-centeredness and self-love that cause all our difficulties, our lack of freedom in suffering, our disappointments and our anguish of soul and body. — Tito Colliander
Everybody who does not live in a prostitute's bed and on a diet of cocaine snow is called an ascetic nowadays. — George Bernard Shaw
They had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not. — Katherine Anne Porter
The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one tenth part of the inhabitants of the earth pursue it consistently, and in a day's time they will have turned it into a Hell. — Jeremy Bentham
Some have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that my Letters were the ripe fruit of many years' study in moral and ascetic theology. They forgot that there is an equally reliable, though less creditable, way of learning how temptation works. — C. S. Lewis
You must learn to follow privately the Lord's bidding: not to speak empty words, not to adorn yourself, always to obey authority, not to look at a woman with desire, not to be angry and much else. — Tito Colliander
It begins here, and has no end, and no earthly power can coerce it; and it is to be found in the human heart. — Tito Colliander
The origin of the stupid ideal of womanhood against which men as well as women to-day are still fighting was the asceticism of the Christian religion; and, unless St. Paul was a woman in disguise, I fail to see how woman is to be blamed for a conception of her place and duty from which she has suffered more than anybody else. — Dora Russell
A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism. — Aldous Huxley
Remember: there is no place, no community, no external circumstance that is not serviceable for the battle you have chosen. The exception is only such work as directly serves your vices. — Tito Colliander
This obstinate will to personal happiness is the cause of unrest and division in your soul. Give it up and work against it: the rest will be given you without effort. — Tito Colliander
We find nothing easier than being wise, patient, superior. We drip with the oil of forbearance and sympathy, we are absurdly just, we forgive everything. For that very reason we ought to discipline ourselves a little; for that very reason we ought to cultivate a little emotion, a little emotional vice, from time to time. It may be hard for us; and among ourselves we may perhaps laugh at the appearance we thus present. But what of that! We no longer have any other mode of self-overcoming available to us: this is our asceticism, our penance. — Friedrich Nietzsche
The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals. — George Orwell
For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism. — Samuel Butler
Consumer asceticism leads to a monoculture of deprivation, which is the opposite of diversity and openness. — Bryant H. McGill
We approach life not just to be able to think about it and talk about it and discover its truths, but also to enjoy it. And so a healthy life really isn't about abstinence or asceticism, it's about enjoying your time on this earth. — Tim Blake Nelson
Many modern scholars have found the asceticism expressed in Plato unacceptable; it does not sound like the advice of a reasonable man in the Cartesian tradition. — Thomas McEvilley
Asceticism, it is evident, has a double motivation. If men and women torment their bodies, it is not only because they hope in this way to atone for past sins and avoid future punishments; it is also because they long to visit the mind's antipodes and do some visionary sightseeing. — Aldous Huxley
The irony is that in our decades, the combination of rationalism, asceticism, and individualism (the so-called Protestant Ethic) has produced precisely the system of boondoggling, luxury-consumption, and status. — Paul Goodman
Fasting, as some people speculate, is not a bodily torture, martyrdom, or a cross, but it is a way to elevate the body to reach the level of cooperation with the soul. When we fast, our intention is not to torture the body but to shun its behaviour. Thus, one who fasts becomes a spiritual and not a physical person. Fasting is an ascetic soul which takes the body with it as its partner in asceticism. — Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria
In Conclusion
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