David Blunkett Quotes

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'm just a monk, I'm like a recluse.

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

Convent - a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.

I like the monastic life... in the prayer and the praising... this has charged me with new energy, spiritual energy. This is very important for my ministry outside the monastery.

I wanted to be a monk at some time in my life, or a priest, so there was a kind of reflex quite early on not to be attached to anything that might be taken away.

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.

Hearing Mass is the ceremony I most favor during my travels. Church is the only place where someone speaks to me and I do not have to answer back.

Having soon discovered to be great, I must appear so, and therefore studiously avoided mixing in society, and wrapped myself in mystery, devoting my time to fasting and prayer.

The only people who like to live alone more than comics are priests.

First and foremost, the monk should own nothing in this world, but he should have as his possessions solitude of the body, modesty of bearing, a modulated tone of voice, and a well-ordered manner of speech. He should be without anxiety as to his food and drink, and should eat in silence.

That was my childhood. I grew up with the monks, studying Sanskrit and meditating for hours in the morning and hours in the evening, and going once a day to beg for food.

I was in a convent for a year.

My father was the church organist; the village curate was my mother's brother, a former monk from the order of Pijar, a very well-educated and ascetic man who loved nothing but solitude.

I didn't take a vow of poverty.

Over time, Benedictine monasteries appeared around the world, always with the same anomaly: brothers living in obedience, meditation, and faith just beneath the rush of the world.

Celibacy is a great help, inasmuch as it enables one to lead a life of full surrender to God.

There is one big misunderstanding of the monastics leaving society.

My Dad used to say that the balance of the world relied on all of the monks who were living outside of society in creative isolation. I don't quite understand the ascetic life or the private life or the monastic private life. But I definitely understand privacy's value.

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells.

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

I am simply just one monk. That's all.

I think I would like to be a monk. I really considered Catholicism a few years ago, but there were some things that I just couldn't reconcile.

Writers are like eremites or anchorites - natural-born eremites or anchorites - who seem puzzled as to why they went up the pole or into the cave in the first place.

Almost every one of the great religions of the world has made special provisions for them, and the woman who has preferred a celibate to a domestic life has been able to occupy a position of honor and usefulness