Asceticism Quotes

Asceticism Quote of the day

Asceticism is not that you should not own anything, but that nothing should own you.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

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.

The ascetic remembrance of death is opposed to akedia, to anxiety, to depression, and becomes a powerful reminder of eternity, its joyful nostalgia.

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.

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.

Genuine asceticism for finding one's own soul and for the good of humanity is worthy of reverence.

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.

If a hermit lives in a state of ecstasy, his lack of comfort becomes the height of comfort. He must relinquish it.

It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men's badness, which is impossible.

Renounce all things, and thou shalt find all things; give up thy lust, and thou shalt find rest.

It begins here, and has no end, and no earthly power can coerce it; and it is to be found in the human heart.

However weighed down and entangled in earthly fetters you may be, it can never be too late.

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.

The ascetic makes a necessity of virtue.

Asceticism and celibacy can conceal many incapacities.

Fie on the eloquence that leaves us craving itself, not things!

Say nothing of the new life you have begun or of the experiment you are making and experiences you expect to have. All this is a matter between God and you, and only between you two.

The saints' deep secret is this: do not seek freedom, and freedom will be given you.

Faith comes not through pondering but through action.

Thus you are led from moment to moment in your halter of preoccupation with self, and kindled instantly to displeasure, impatience or anger if an obstacle intervenes.

Nothing happens accidentally or in such a way that you cannot learn from it; you must understand this at once, for this is how your trust grows in the Lord whom you have chosen to follow.

Cast off the burden of sin and you will find within you the upward path that will make your ascent possible.

Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease.

Without asceticism, self-indulgence would be insignificant.

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.

Dieting is our last tie with asceticism.

Asceticism without religion is just another way of cultivating peculiar sensations.

Asceticism is the right way of thinking for those who have to extirpate their sensual drives because they are ravening beasts of prey. But only for those!

Patience is the highest asceticism.

[N]othing is more easily corrupted than an artist.

For two thousand years or more man has been subjected to a systematic effort to transform him into an ascetic animal. He remains a pleasure-seeking animal.

This is a nation that professes to be a Christian nation, " [Suelo] tells me, surveying his temporary kingdom. "And yet it's basically illegal to live according to the teachings of Jesus.

The rustic, the reader of novels, the pure ascetic: these three are truly happy men

It was a dictum of his that the soul's energy thrives when the body's desires are feeblest.