When you reach your sixties, you have to decide whether you're going to be a sot or an ascetic. In other words if you want to go on working after you're sixty, some degree of asceticism is inevitable.
In general, it can be said that no contemplative life is possible without ascetic self-discipline. One must learn to survive without the habit-forming luxuries which get such a hold on men today. I do not say that to be a contemplative one absolutely has to go without smoking or without alcohol, but certainly one must be able to use these things without being dominated by an uncontrolled need for them.
All this fame and money, which have so thrilled me when they came to others, leave me cold when they come to me. I am not an ascetic, but I don't know what to do with them, and my daily life has never been so trying, and there is no one to fill it emotionally.
Ascetic spirituality is a symptom of the very disease which it intends to cure.
Debauchery conceived of as a kind of ascetic experience is not new, either for men or for women, but until Story of O no woman to my knowledge had said it.
No ascetic can be considered reliably sane.
A holy life is not an ascetic, or gloomy or solitary life, but a life regulated by divine truth and faithful in Christian duty. It is living above the world while we are still in it.
The ascetic remembrance of death is opposed to akedia, to anxiety, to depression, and becomes a powerful reminder of eternity, its joyful nostalgia.
Man can learn self-discipline without becoming ascetic; he can be wise without waiting to be old; he can be influential without waiting for status. Man can sharpen his ability to distinguish between matters of principle and matters of preference, but only if we have a wise interplay between time and truth, between minutes and morality.
During a chess tournament a master must envisage himself as a cross between an ascetic monk and a beast of prey.
Some have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that my Letters were the ripe fruit of many years' study in moral and ascetic theology. They forgot that there is an equally reliable, though less creditable, way of learning how temptation works.
The ascetic makes a necessity of virtue.
Forgiveness is the true nature of the ascetic.
I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.
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.
In short, the Gaon was a one-sided, severe ascetic, and would never have deserved the title of a good father, a good husband, an amiable man. . . [T]here is no occasion at all for pitying Mrs. Gaon. . . . Saints are happy in their suffering, and noble souls find their happiness in sacrificing themselves for these sufferers.
A dominant religion is never ascetic.
I'm not an ascetic and please don't use the word zen, which is so lightly bandied about these days. Being zen. . . It's shameful to talk in such a way. I haven't become an ascetic but I'm not going to build up another collection. I'm going to create my new environment. I already know what I want.
