I should have been a Trappist monk.

“Magda was reading a book by a Trappist, in a better mood, and I was sitting on the edge of the bed, fingering my…

— Junot Díaz

Anyone who supposed that when Margaret Thatcher left Number Ten she was going to take a Trappist vow did not know that formidable politician.

— Chris Patten

As I tell my children, the first thing is always health. Get sleep, don't party, don't do drugs or drink. If your body is…

— Colm Wilkinson

My heart has become capable of every form: It is a pasture for gazelles And a monastery for Christian monks, And the pilgrim's Ka'ba,…

— Ibn Arabi

Firstly, as a Buddhist monk, I hold that violence is not good. Secondly, I am a firm believer in the Gandian ethic of passive…

— Dalai Lama

Where we've been wise is that, while 'Monk' may have been a risk at the beginning, we've built its success and built on its…

— Bonnie Hammer

I turned into a monk when my mother went to learn Buddhism in Burma. While she learnt at the monastery, I used to roam…

— Kabir Bedi

“I have my own way to walk and for some reason or other Zen is right in the middle of it wherever I go.…

— Thomas Merton

Believe nothing, O monks, just because you have been told it, or it is commonly believed, or because it is traditional or because you…

— Gautama Buddha

Indeed, said the monk, a mass, a matins, and vespers well rung are half-said.

— Francois Rabelais

A solitary American monk named Thomas Berry writes that in our relationship to nature, we have been autistic for centuries. Wrapped tightly in our…

— Janine Benyus

If your spirit still looks around at the time of prayer, then it does not yet pray as a monk. You are no better…

— Evagrius Ponticus

I listened to King Oliver and I listened to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp... I listened…

— Eric Clapton

So too, monks, I saw the ancient path, the ancient road traveled by the Perfectly Enlightened Ones of the past. And what is that…

— Gautama Buddha

I always thought if I was born 2000 years earlier, I would be a monk, probably carving a monastery or some giant pantheon buildings.

— Jenova Chen