Monasticism Quotes

“...for you know that soft is stronger than hard, water stronger than rock, love stronger than force." Vesadeva to Siddartha”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“The Lord does not require us to wear a [cassock] — He wants us to be good and kind.”
― Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives: The Life and Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

“The monk's ultimate goal is direct union with the Godhead. But to aim at that goal is to miss it altogether. His task is to rid himself of ego so that consciousness, once its usual discordant mental content is dumped out of it through ritual prayer and meditation, may experience nonself as a living formlessness and emptiness into which God may come, if it please Him to come.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

“Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life. ”
― Thomas Merton, The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals – A Spiritual Autobiography of Monastic Wisdom and Global Faith

“If you are forgetful of the Lord, you will not pray, and without prayer the soul will not dwell in the love of God, for the grace of the Holy Spirit comes through prayer.”
― Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald, A Year in the Holy Spirit with Saint Silouan the Athonite: - A Calendar of Daily Quotes

“The Lord vouchsafed us to be in His likeness, but the Lord is so meek and lowly that wert thou to see Him, from much joy thou wouldst want to exclaim, "O Lord, I melt with Thy grace!" but at that moment thou art unable to utter a single word concerning God, for thy soul is transformed from the abundance of the Holy Spirit. Thus it was with St. Seraphim of Sarov - when he beheld the Lord, he was unable to speak.”
― Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald, A Year in the Holy Spirit with Saint Silouan the Athonite: - A Calendar of Daily Quotes

“He grew enthusiastic in thinking of the convents. Ah! to be earthed up among them, sheltered from the herd, not to know what books appear, what newspapers are printed, never to know what goes on outside one's cell, among men—to complete the beneficent silence of this cloistered life, nourishing ourselves with good actions, refreshing ourselves with plain song, saturating ourselves with the inexhaustible joys of the liturgies.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans

“What avails monastic aspirations when, as Mark had said, religious geniuses were born and not made? Could not renouncing the world be a form of self-indulgence? Was not monasticism, in the end, as much an act of cowardice as courage?”
― Pico Iyer, The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto

“[The Lord] is exceedingly meek and lowly, and when the soul sees Him she is all transformed into love for God and her neighbour...becomes meek and lowly herself. But if a man lose grace, he will weep like Adam cast out of paradise.”
― Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald, A Year in the Holy Spirit with Saint Silouan the Athonite: - A Calendar of Daily Quotes

“We [vowed religious; nuns, monks] want to be squares, and we want others to be square, also. That's what religious have been doing. They're part of a square society. And let me be quite clear about the fact that liberalism doesn't get you off this hook, because liberals are part of the square society, too. It's better to be a liberal than a conservative, but they're both equally square.”
― Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton on Prayer

“[T]o the man who beseeches the Lord all things are given, not because we are worthy but because the Lord is merciful and loves us.”
― Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald, A Year in the Holy Spirit with Saint Silouan the Athonite: - A Calendar of Daily Quotes

“When a small child calls out, "I want bread! I am hungry," does his mother not...prepare him something to eat? Likewise, if all day we call out, "We want to be saved!...Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us." will Christ not send us His mercy?”
― Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald, Daily Quotes from "Words of the Heart" by Gerondissa Makrina Vassopoulou

“The purpose of judgment must be that the one you are judging should mend his ways, and you must be compassionate with every soul...and in all things preserve a clear conscience yourself. Then deep peace will reign in mind and soul.”
― Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald, A Year in the Holy Spirit with Saint Silouan the Athonite: - A Calendar of Daily Quotes

“We believe that true freedom means not sinning, in order to love God and one's neighbour with our whole heart and our whole strength. True freedom means constant dwelling in God.”
― Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald, A Year in the Holy Spirit with Saint Silouan the Athonite: - A Calendar of Daily Quotes

“And the Mother of God - what was her love for the Lord, her Son? No human being can conceive of the nature of her love save the Mother of God herself. But the Spirit of God opens our eyes to love. And in her was and is this same Spirit of God, Which is love, and therefore he who has come to know the Holy Spirit is able in part to conceive of the nature even of her love.”
― Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald, A Year in the Holy Spirit with Saint Silouan the Athonite: - A Calendar of Daily Quotes

“Humility is the light in which we may behold the Light which is God – in the words of the Psalmist: “In thy light shall we see light.”
― Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald, A Year in the Holy Spirit with Saint Silouan the Athonite: - A Calendar of Daily Quotes

“It is not he who disparages himself who shows humility (for who will not put up with himself?), but he who maintains the same love for the very man who reproaches him.”
― Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald, Divine Ascent - Daily Quotes

“When the soul is full of the love of God, out of infinite joy she sorrows and in tears prays for the whole world, that all men may come to know their Lord and heavenly Father. There is no rest for her, nor does she desire rest, until all mankind delights in the grace of His love.”
― Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald, A Year in the Holy Spirit with Saint Silouan the Athonite: - A Calendar of Daily Quotes

“Prayer comes with praying, as the Scriptures say; but prayer which is only a habit, prayer without contrition for our sins, is not pleasing to the Lord.”
― Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald, A Year in the Holy Spirit with Saint Silouan the Athonite: - A Calendar of Daily Quotes

“We must be careful not to judge - extremely careful! It is so terrible that it is beyond words! "Judge not, that ye be not judged." Have we kept this? Even if we have no virtue but we don't judge, Christ will save us and take us to Paradise.”
― Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald, Daily Quotes from "Words of the Heart" by Gerondissa Makrina Vassopoulou

“With my sins I am worse than a noisome cur but I began to beseech God for forgiveness, and He granted me not only forgiveness but also the Holy Spirit, and in the Holy Spirit I knew God.”
― Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald, A Year in the Holy Spirit with Saint Silouan the Athonite: - A Calendar of Daily Quotes

“The Holy Spirit is love, and He gives the soul strength to love her enemies. And he who does not love his enemies does not know God.”
― Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald, A Year in the Holy Spirit with Saint Silouan the Athonite: - A Calendar of Daily Quotes

“The effect of the mortification of the domestic affections upon the general character was probably very pernicious. The family circle is the appointed sphere, not only for the performance of manifest duties, but also for the cultivation of the affections; and the extreme ferocity which so often characterised the ascetic was the natural consequence of the discipline he imposed upon himself. Severed from all other ties, the monks clung with desperate tenacity to their opinions and to their Church, and hated those who dissented from them with all the intensity of men whose whole lives were concentrated on a single subject, whose ignorance and bigotry prevented them from conceiving the possibility of any good thing in opposition to themselves, and who had made it a main object of their discipline to eradicate all natural sympathies and affections.”
― William Edward Hartpole Lecky, History of European morals from Augustus to Charlemagne

“Neither monasticism nor materialism will do. To move forward we must stand whole and true.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Handcrafted Humanity: 100 Sonnets For A Blunderful World

“I have no cares and no interests. The fussy business of the world I would not give a glance to. The one thing I wish for is to be alone, and all by myself to pray, to pray without ceasing; and doing this, I am filled with joy.”
― Anonymous

“Seclusion Won’t Do (The Sonnet)

Each of you must turn into a sufi saint,
Each of you must turn into a latin lover.
Each of you must turn into a shaolin monk,
Each of you must turn into a bengal tiger.
It won't do to seclude yourself in a monastery,
It won't do to seclude yourself behind a desk.
The monk must come down to the streets of life,
The scholar must till the soil with their sweat.
Service of humanity is the fulfillment of divinity,
Service of humanity is the right use of intellect.
Occasional seclusion is good, to charge up the mind,
But life-long seclusion from society is sheer waste.
Enlightenment that doesn't eliminate separation
is no enlightenment.
Intelligence that doesn't elevate the collective
is no intelligence.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans

“The experience of many monks and nuns is that their awareness of the closeness of God occurs as often outside formal prayer as inside it: at work, in caring for others, in admiring the scenery, even in sleep. God will not be organized. If our expectations of prayer are built on the hypothesis of God’s predictability, our only certainty is that we will be disappointed.”
― Michael Casey, Strangers to the City: Reflections on the Beliefs and Values of the Rule of St. Benedict

“The simple, chaste lines of a monastic Church, built perhaps by unskilled hands in the wilderness, may well say infinitely more in praise of God than the pretentious enormities of costly splendor that are erected to be looked at rather than to be prayed in.”
― Thomas Merton, The Silent Life

“Monasticism provides a valid means of avoiding the sensual attachments that can be a very real distraction to meditation. Monks are acutely aware that family ties are an intensely emotional attachment—and therefore distraction—and intentionally limit, if not cut off completely, their contacts with their families.”
― Robert E. Buswell Jr., The Zen Monastic Experience

“To practice as monks is to train ourselves in mindfulness and awakening, to first free ourselves from suffering and then to help others do the same.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, My Master's Robe: Memories of a Novice Monk