Asceticism Quotes - Page 4

• For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which to-day determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.

  Max Weber

  Cells, Order, Everyday

  The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism ch. 5 (1920) (translation by Talcott Parsons)

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• 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

  Desire, Bidding, Looks

  Tito Colliander (1982). “Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth”, p.19, St Vladimir's Seminary Press

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• If you were not full of self-pity you would soon observe that we ourselves are to blame for all this evil, because we refuse to understand that it is in reality a good thing.

  Tito Colliander

  Reality, Self, Evil

  Tito Colliander (1982). “Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth”, p.18, St Vladimir's Seminary Press

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• A truly unselfish act is not mine, but God's. It cannot be obstructed. Only for my own plans, my own wishes to study, to work, to rest, eat, or do a service to my fellowman- can some external circumstance "get in the way," and then I am grieved.

  Tito Colliander

  Wish, Unselfish Acts, Way

  Tito Colliander (1982). “Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth”, p.22, St Vladimir's Seminary Press

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• 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

  Luxury, Ethics, Irony

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.131, New York Review of Books

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• 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.

  Tito Colliander

  Way, Lord, Grows

  Tito Colliander (1982). “Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth”, p.10, St Vladimir's Seminary Press

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• 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.

  Tito Colliander

  Two, New Life, Matter

  Tito Colliander (1982). “Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth”, p.9, St Vladimir's Seminary Press

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• 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

  Plato, Men, Advice

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