Monastic Community Quotes

Household life is crowded and dusty; life gone forth is wide open... Suppose I shave off my hair and beard, put on the ochre robe, and go forth from the home life into homelessness.

[The monks'] minds were inaccessible to reason or mercy . . .

Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace.

Hey, I always say: if you want a quiet life, become a monk.

Nietzsche's ideas and plans: for example, the idea of giving up the whole wretched academic world to form a secular monastic community.

Ashram means a community of men of religion. I feel that an ashram was a necessity of life for me.

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.

What will you do now?' I think I will become a monk and devote my entire life to prayer and good works.' No,' said Rek. 'I mean, what will you do today?' Ah! Today I'll get drunk and go whoring,' said Bowman.

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.

He was somebody who made me think, I suppose, about the contemplative life. I've always been a city fellow, but I've often had vague thoughts about 'checking out' and perhaps going into a monastery and just seeing what it was like.

I was filming in Roscrea in Co Tipperary. I had great fun watching monks in the monastery there making bread. They even offered me a job as their main baker. One of them said I would make a good monk, but I told him there was a slight problem because I was married.

When I became a novice monk, I lived in a temple where the atmosphere was quite like in a family. The abbot is like a father and other monks are like your big brothers, your small, younger brothers. It is a kind of family.

Forty-one rules aren't so many - St. Benedict had 73 to keep the brethren on the straight and narrow.

I should have been a Trappist monk.

Most of the utopian community ideas actually are religious. They're based more on the idea of the monastery than the commune.

I would not be happy if I had not become a monk.

He called out to his fellow monks,'Come quickly I am tasting stars.

Monastic brotherhood, upon rock Aerial.