Monasteries Quotes - Page 5

• One of the most persistent fallacies about the Christian Church is that it kept learning alive during the Dark and Middle Ages. What the Church did was to keep learning alive in the monasteries, while preventing the spread of knowledge outside them... Even as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, nine-tenths of Christian Europe was illiterate.

  Margaret E. Knight

  Christian, Dark, Europe

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• Christianity ... has produced the iniquities of the Inquisition, the egotism and celibacy of the monasteries, the fury of religious wars, the ferocity of the Hussite, of the Catholic, of the Puritan, of the Spaniard, of the Irish Orangeman and of the Irish Papist; it has divided families, alienated friends, lighted the torch of civil war, and borne the virgin and the greybeard to the burning pile, broken delicate limbs upon the wheel and wrung the souls and bodies of innocent creatures on the rack; all this it has done, and done in the name of God.

  Ouida

  Religious, War, Soul And Body

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• Possession of books denounced as heretical was made a criminal offense. Copies of such books were burned and destroyed. But in Upper Egypt, someone, possibly a monk from a nearby monastery of St Pachomius, took the banned books and hid them from destruction - in the jar where they remained buried for almost 1,600 years.

  Elaine Pagels

  Book, Egypt, Years

  Elaine Pagels (2004). “The Gnostic Gospels”, p.17, Random House

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• The Jesuits are a MILITARY organization, not a religious order. Their chief is a general of an army, not the mere father abbot of a monastery. And the aim of this organization is power - power in its most despotic exercise - absolute power, universal power, power to control the world by the volition of a single man. Jesuitism is the most absolute of despotisms - and at the same time the greatest and most enormous of abuses.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Religious, Father, Military

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• The early masters also introduced walking meditation and hard work to the monastery, for too much sitting could reach the point of diminishing returns.

  James H. Austin

  Work, Walking Meditation, Too Much

  James H. Austin (1999). “Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness”, p.9, MIT Press

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• The spirit of the West, of America, is different than the East. The cultural conditioning is very different. It seems to be harder for people to work in teams, more difficult for people here to live in harmony, in a monastery.

  Frederick Lenz

  Team, Buddhism, America

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• Just studying Buddhism, then meditating and going to Buddhist monasteries, talking to Buddhist monks, combined with the Thai people themselves, changed the way I look at the world.

  John Burdett

  Buddhist, Buddhism, Talking

  "Thai Air. John Burdett on 'Bangkok Haunts'". "Austin Chronicle" Interview, www.austinchronicle.com. June 15, 2007.

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• It's a huge Carthusian monastery, stuck down between rocks and sea, where you may imagine me, without white gloves or hair curling, as pale as ever, in a cell with such doors as Paris never had for gates. The cell is the shape of a tall coffin, with an enormous dusty vaulting, a small window... Bach, my scrawls and waste paper - silence - you could scream - there would still be silence. Indeed, I write to you from a strange place.

  Frederic Chopin

  Writing, Paris, White

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• During the last 2,500 years in Buddhist monasteries, a system of seven practices of reconciliation has evolved. Although these techniques were formulated to settle disputes within the circle of monks, i think they might also be of use in our households and in our society.The first practice is Face-to-Face-Sitting.

  Nhat Hanh

  Buddhist, Thinking, Years

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2008). “Being Peace”, p.88, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• My most important projects have been the building and maintaining of schools and medical clinics for my dear friends in the Himalaya and helping restore their beautiful monasteries, too.

  Edmund Hillary

  Beautiful, School, Important

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