#monks

Being a monk was the strangest and most perverted way of life imaginable. Monks spent half their lives putting themselves through pain and discomfort that they could easily avoid, and the other half muttering meaningless mumbo jumbo in empty churches at all hours of the day and night. They deliberately shunned anything good—girls, sports, feasting and family life. ↗

— Ken Follett

#monks #religious-practices #family

Haiku is not a shriek, a howl, a sigh, or a yawn; rather, it is the deep breath of life. ↗

— Santoka Taneda

#creating #haiku #japanese #poetry #zen

O cowardly amd tyrannous race of monks, persecutors of the bard, and the gleemen, haters of life and joy! O race that does not draw the sword and tell the truth! O race that melts the bones of the people with cowardice and with deceit! ("The Crucifixion Of The Outcast") ↗

— W.B. Yeats

#religion #life

Luther was guilty of two great crimes - he struck the Pope in his crown, and the monks in their belly. ↗

— Desiderius Erasmus

#crimes #crown #great #guilty #his

The monkish vows keep us far from that sink of vice that is the female body, but often they bring us close to other errors. Can I finally hide from myself the fact that even today my old age is still stirred by the noonday demon when my eyes, in choir, happen to linger on the beardless face of a novice, pure and fresh as a maiden's? ↗

— Umberto Eco

#hypocrisy #lust #misogyny #monks #pedophilia

...some of the best love poems have been written by monks and nuns... ↗

— John Geddes

#monks #nuns #poems #love

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations—there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science. ↗

— Santoka Taneda

#creating #haiku #japanese #poetry #zen

When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy. ↗

— Matsuo Bashō

#creating #haiku #japanese #poetry #zen

You haven't partied until you've partied at dawn in complete silence with Buddhist monks. ↗

— Cameron Diaz

#complete #dawn #haven #monks #silence

We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation. ↗

— Alexander Herzen

#contemplation #general #just #monks #our