Clouds Quote by Edward Gibbon

[The monks'] credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light…

— Edward Gibbon

“From the point of view of history, of reason, and of truth, monasticism is condemned. Monasteries, when they abound in a nation, are clogs…

— Victor Hugo

There is a basic problem that a lot of Western monks and nuns become ordained without really understanding or appreciating what the monastic life…

— Tenzin Palmo

“One of the great dangers faced by monastic practitioners is that, after a few months or a few years or a few decades, we…

— Michael Casey

Working in film, I'm sure you have insight into this, there's something great that only comes by way of interactions with others that a…

— John Maus

There is one big misunderstanding of the monastics leaving society.

— Shane Claiborne

Monastic life cuts off the distractions and emotional entanglements one becomes involved in, in the lay life.

— Tenzin Palmo

The monastic folks have the spirit of being in the world but not of the world, sort of peculiar people who have gone to…

— Shane Claiborne

“Monastic contemplatives have staked out a clearly limited area to be transformed by contemplation: the monastery. Lay contemplatives face the challenge of transforming the…

— David Steindl-Rast

“Monasticism is really based on the idea that if you leave people, you leave the spirit of the world. But you do not. You…

— David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Mystics are all a bit funny in the head anyway," the priest added cynically, "which is why the church locks them all up in…

— Robert Anton Wilson

I think they [ monastic folks ] were going to the desert to build a new society and in a sense to build a…

— Shane Claiborne