At the age of 15, I was obsessed with monasteries… I wanted to be a nun for a while. That’s maybe reflected in my work as a scientist: many hours are spent alone, cut off from the world. — Emmanuelle Charpentier
Becoming a monk was a hard decision. Leaving being a monk was harder, but it's given me so much faith in my ability to transition, and that what I learned as a monk can still serve me. — Jay Shetty
You haven't partied until you've partied at dawn in complete silence with Buddhist monks. — Cameron Diaz
Then are they truly monks when they live by the labor of their hands. — Benedict of Nursia
Running is just such a monastery- a retreat, a place to commune with God and yourself, a place for psychological and spiritual renewal. — George A. Sheehan
I have devoted my energies to the study of the scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church; study, teaching, and writing have always been my delight. — Venerable Bede
That I am a monk and you are a layman is of no importance ... rather that we are both in the light of the Holy Spirit ... Acquire peace, and thousands around you will be saved. — Seraphim of Sarov
Delight in meditation and solitude. Compose yourself, be happy. You are a seeker. — Buddha
Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, sober steadfast, and demure, all in a robe of darkest grain, flowing with majestic train. — John Milton
A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope; a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed. — Herman Melville
The monk mindset is, ‘How do I just place this next step?’ Not perfectly, but how do I place this next step with my best intention, process, and habits possible? — Jay Shetty
Short Monastic Quotes
Cooperation in the most natural thing in the world — Janine Benyus
The God of the incarnation is more domestic than monastic. — Ronald Rolheiser
Monastic incarceration is castration. — Victor Hugo
There is one big misunderstanding of the monastics leaving society. — Shane Claiborne
It was Nate Monaster who encouraged me to be a writer. — Gary David
The curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life. — Abraham Kuyper
Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself. — Albert Camus
I like the monastic life... in the prayer and the praising... this has charged me with new energy, spiritual energy. This is very important for my ministry outside the monastery. — Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria
Working in film, I'm sure you have insight into this, there's something great that only comes by way of interactions with others that a monastic life does not afford. — John Maus
Monastic life cuts off the distractions and emotional entanglements one becomes involved in, in the lay life. — Tenzin Palmo
There is a basic problem that a lot of Western monks and nuns become ordained without really understanding or appreciating what the monastic life is all about. — Tenzin Palmo
My Dad used to say that the balance of the world relied on all of the monks who were living outside of society in creative isolation. I don't quite understand the ascetic life or the private life or the monastic private life. But I definitely understand privacy's value. — Sufjan Stevens
Art is a vocation, as much as anything in this world. For the real artist, it is the most natural thing in the world, not as necessary as air and water, perhaps, but as food and water. But we really do lead almost a monastic life, you know; to follow it you very often have to give up something. — Katherine Anne Porter
Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Thinking about monastic ideals is not the same as living up to them, but at any rate such thinking has an important place in a monk's life, because you cannot begin to do anything unless you have some idea what you are trying to do. — Thomas Merton
Monk Quotes
The road to Hell is paved with the bones of priests and monks, and the skulls of bishops are the lamp posts that light the path. — Saint John Chrysostom
I desire to go to Hell and not to Heaven. In the former I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings and princes, while in the latter are only beggars, monks and apostles — Niccolo Machiavelli
My heart has become capable of every form: It is a pasture for gazelles And a monastery for Christian monks, And the pilgrim's Ka'ba, And the tablets of the Torah, And the book of the Koran. I follow the religion of Love: Whatever way love's camel takes, That is my religion, my faith. — Ibn Arabi
I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years. — Thelonious Monk
My heart can be pasture for deer and a convent for monks, a temple for idols and a Kaaba for the pilgrims. It is both the tables of the Torah and the Koran. It professes the religion of Love wherever its caravans are heading. Love is my law. Love is my faith. — Ibn Arabi
My heart can take on any form:
A meadow for gazelles,
A cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground,
Ka'ba for the circling pilgrim,
The tables of the Torah,
The scrolls of the Quran.
My creed is Love;
Wherever its caravan turns along the way,
That is my belief,
My faith. — Ibn Arabi
The prayer of the monk is not perfect until he no longer recognizes himself or the fact that he is praying. — Anthony of Padua
I went through the whole number, you know. The swing era, the boogie woogie era, the bebop era. Thelonious Monk is still one of my favorites. So a lot of these people had their effect on me. — Mose Allison
The more you know the less you talk. — A. R. Rahman
Monastery Quotes
Let love lead your soul. Make it a place to retire to, a kind of monastery cave, a retreat for the deepest core of your being. — Farid al-Din Attar
In the monastery of your heart, you have a temple where all Buddhas unite. — Milarepa
In monasteries, seminaries, retreats and synagogues, they fear hell and seek paradise. Those who know the mysteries of God never let that seed be planted in their souls. — Omar Khayyam
The Church is not a monastery for the isolation of perfect people. It is more like a hospital provided for those who wish to get well. — Jeffrey R. Holland
Don‘t go to another monastery with your own rules. — Russian Proverbs
I made the key discovery for CRISPR there, while living in my scientific monastery in northern Sweden. At the same time, I was very interested in detective stories, searching for enigmas. — Emmanuelle Charpentier
My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk. — John Keats
In a few Zen monasteries, every monk has to start his morning with laughter, and has to end his night with laughter - the first thing and the last thing! You try it. . . For no reason! Because there is no reason. Simply, you are again there, still alive - it is a miracle! — Osho
An order given in battle, an instruction issued by the master of a sailing ship, a cry for help, are as powerful in modifying the course of events as any other bodily act...You utter a vow or forge a signature and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman or prison. — Bronislaw Malinowski
Buddhist Monk Quotes
I follow four dictates: face it, accept it, deal with it, then let it go. — Sheng-yen
The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life. — Nhat Hanh
Anger and hatred are the real enemies that we must confront and defeat, not the 'enemies' who appear from time to time in our lives. — Dalai Lama
No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change. — Nhat Hanh
Buddhist monks have known for centuries that meditation can change the mind. Now we are inspired by His Holiness to examine with our technology the precise brain changes that occur with practice... The unique collaboration on meditation is just beginning. — Richard Davidson
I can't tell how moving it is to open my email and see a picture of 1,500 Buddhist monks and nuns in the Himalayan kingdom of Ladakh forming a human 350 against the backdrop of the melting glaciers. This is not their fault, and yet they're stepping up to be part of the solution. — Bill McKibben
He who can curb his wrath as soon as it arises, as a timely antidote will check snake's venom that so quickly spreads, - such a monk gives up the here and the beyond, just as a serpent sheds its worn-out skin. — Buddha
When I was a teenager, I wanted to be in a group, or I wanted to work for Greenpeace, or I wanted to be a Buddhist monk. Those were the only three things I really wanted to do. I was doing some sort of soul searching in life. — Dave Wakeling
Originally, I was interested in athletic pursuits like snowboarding, martial arts and surfing. When I went to the Himalayas and met a number of Buddhist monks I was introduced to a new way of looking at life. — Frederick Lenz
There is, Oh Monks, a not-born, a not-become, a not-made, a not-compounded. Monks, if that unborn, not-become, not-made, not-compounded were not, there would be no escape from this here that is born, become, made and compounded. — Buddha
By my monastic life and vows I am saying no to all the concentration camps, the aerial bombardments, the staged political trials, the judicial murders, the racial injustices, the economic tyrannies, and the whole socioeconomic apparatus which seems geared for nothing but global destruction in spite of all its fair words in favor of peace. — Thomas Merton
If you have an idea of what you want to do in your future, you must go at it with almost monastic obsession. [...] You have to go at it single-mindedly and let nothing get in your way. — Henry Rollins
You know, I live a monastic lifestyle. No, I do. I do live in extremes, basically. I go back and forth. Once every six months, I'll have a day where I eat more chocolate than has ever been consumed by a human being. — Jim Carrey
I like the church, I like a cowl,
I love a prophet of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles;
Yet not for all his faith can see,
Would I that cowled churchman be. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Because someone is a lama or is part of a monastic order or claims to be part of a succession, doesn't really mean they know anything. Always examine the individual's consciousness, their ability to transmit light. — Frederick Lenz
It was not reason that besieged Troy; it was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world; that inspired the crusades; that instituted the monastic orders; it was not reason that produced the Jesuits; above all, it was not reason that created the French Revolution. Man is only great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination. — Benjamin Disraeli
It is more to the honor of a Christian by faith to overcome the world, than by monastical vows to retreat from it; more for the honor of Christ to serve him in the city, than to serve him in the cell. — Matthew Henry
A true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty. — Herman Melville
The happiest moments are when we sit down and we feel the presence of our brothers and sisters, lay and monastic, who are practicing walking and sitting mediation. — Thich Nhat Hanh
If there are 1,500 people in a theater and they're all there to see you, there are no other guys. You're the guy. So it is a monastic life, it is very lonely, if I was prone to loneliness. It's a lot like wrestling, no one can throw a block for you, no one can give you a pass. Nobody can hand the ball off to you, it's you only for an hour and a half every night. — Jay Mohr
In a monastic setting, if someone doesn't want to obey the rules and just wants to live the way they've always lived as a lay person, then why did they become ordained? They have no sense that they have to give something up to gain so much. — Tenzin Palmo
I've always loved the Sangha. I have the deepest, deepest respect for them. I'm very sorry that in the West people don't appreciate what the monastic order is about. — Tenzin Palmo
I'm not a method actor but it certainly does help to have that kind of dedication. I treated my preparation like I was in the military. I didn't go out ever. I went out for drinks probably twice in five months. I lived very monastically. — Patrick Heusinger
Whoever has God truly as a companion, is with him in all places, both on the streets, and among people, as well as in church, or in the desert or in a monastic cell...Why is this so? It is so because such a person possesses God alone, keeping their gaze fixed upon God, and thus all things become God for him or her. Such people be a God in all their deeds and in all the places they go, and it is God alone who is the author of all their deeds. — Meister Eckhart
The day has gone by when a monk can tear a Hypatia from the pursuit of philosophy and throw her to a rabble of insane monastics to be dragged to a violent death.... Man has made himself a law unto himself, publishing it in his pretended "heavenly" revelations, dogmas, and statutes. Woman is not constructing a law unto herself, and she is putting it forth, not on a pretendedly supernatural, but on a natural basis. — Ellen Battelle Dietrick
[The Dalai Lama] told me some years ago, "I've made every concession to China, and I've been as open and tolerant as I could, and still things get worse in Tibet." If you look at it from one point of view, as he himself says, his monastic position of forbearance and nonviolence hasn't reaped any benefits. And yet, he's thinking in terms of the long term, of centuries. — Pico Iyer
I think they [ monastic folks ] were going to the desert to build a new society and in a sense to build a new world, a new culture together where it was easier to be good and holy. — Shane Claiborne
We have been mentored from the very beginning by Catholic folks who are invigorating the best of the monastic spirit. — Shane Claiborne
The monastic folks have the spirit of being in the world but not of the world, sort of peculiar people who have gone to the desert to live on the margins of the empire. — Shane Claiborne
I practice yoga and breathing daily along with all the exercises on the instrument. I'm getting more and more monastic about it, especially when I'm on tour, because I'm making songs that are harder to perform all the time. So I no longer smoke and I drink a lot less on tour. — Colin Stetson
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
The monastic studies have tended, for the most part, to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition. — Edward Gibbon
I've gone to Yaddo many times, I've worked at the Rockefeller Foundation's Center for Scholars and Artists in Bellagio. That these are places of beauty and of changed landscape is helpful - but far more important for me is that they offer what I feel as a monastic luxury: undisturbed time. — Jane Hirshfield
You are holding in your hands not only a book of readings and instruction for the journey, but one monastic's heart of love held out to a searching world. — Paula D'Arcy
Nietzsche's ideas and plans: for example, the idea of giving up the whole wretched academic world to form a secular monastic community. — Karl Jaspers
Let us cultivate love and compassion, both of which give life true meaning. This is the religion I preach. It is simple. Its temple is the heart. Its teaching is love and compassion. Its moral values are loving and respecting others, whoever they may be. Whether one is a lay person or a monastic, we have no other option if we wish to survive in this world. — Dalai Lama
The Buhha was a monastic, but the practice of mindfulness in the context of any lifestyle is one of renunciation. Every moment of mindfulness renounces the reflexive, self-protecting response of the mind in favor of clear and balanced understanding. In the light of the wisdom that comes from balanced undertanding, attachment to having things be other than what they ar falls away. — Sylvia Boorstein
In many cases, mathematics is an escape from reality. The mathematician finds his own monastic niche and happiness in pursuits that are disconnected from external affairs. Some practice it as if using a drug. — Stanislaw Ulam
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of monastic quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about monastic to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of monastic quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
