Thich Nhat Hanh 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.

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.

I did take comfort in the vespers and compline. I might have become a monk if I hadn't come out.

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

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

Monastic brotherhood, upon rock Aerial.

You are our dearly beloved brothers, and in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.

My wife and I are affiliated with a temple here in Los Angeles. We feel very close to the congregation and to the rabbi, who happens to be my wife's cousin and who I admire greatly. I talk to him regularly but I consider myself more spiritual than religious.

I should have been a Trappist monk.

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.

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.

On the whole, monks do not become famous - and that is a good thing - but monasteries do - and that is an excellent thing. In other words, it is the community that matters.

The voice that called us years ago still calls us today. Every monastic day is a new monastic beginning.

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.

There is one big misunderstanding of the monastics leaving society.

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

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

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

In a quiet Franciscan monastery kind and silent monks looked after me. After many weeks I was discharged. Unfit for further service.

Monastic incarceration is castration.

If you want to be great in what you're doing, you really need to limit yourself, so I consider my life as the life of a monk.

The entire unit of 'Saath Phere' is like an extended family for me.

I wish my brother well. We agree to disagree, but he is a good man. He is my brother.