#ascetic

I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#belly #frenetic #hair #his #i

I'm a fairly ascetic person. And I do most of my writing at night. You don't get distracted, your brain goes into what you are writing about, into the world you're writing about, rather than into the world you're in. ↗

— Caleb Carr

#ascetic #brain #distracted #fairly #get

Read from a distant star, the majuscule script of our earthly existence would perhaps lead to the conclusion that the earth was the distinctively ascetic planet, a nook of disgruntled, arrogant creatures filled with a profound disgust with themselves, at the earth, at all life, who inflict as much pain on themselves as they possibly can out of pleasure in inflicting pain which is probably their only pleasure. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#masochism #life

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#been #condemn #drive #history #men

If there is no element of asceticism in our lives, if we give free rein to the desires of the flesh (taking care of course to keep within the limits of what seems permissible to the world), we shall find it hard to train for the service of Christ. When the flesh is satisfied it is hard to pray with cheerfulness or to devote oneself to a life of service which calls for much self-renunciation. ↗

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#christ #christianity #discipleship #discipline #fasting

It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men's badness, which is impossible. ↗

— Marcus Aurelius

#ethics #evil #morality #renunciation #stoic