Asceticism Quotes

Asceticism he found to be useless. It was vain to attempt to escape from the world. There is no escape from the world even for an ascetic. He realised that what is necessary is not escape from the world. What is necessary is to change the world and to make it better.

The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge - a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.

Asceticism is the right way of thinking for those who have to extirpate their sensual drives because they are ravening beasts of prey. But only for those!

Ascetic ideals reveal so many bridges to independence that a philosopher is bound to rejoice and clap his hands when he hears the story of all those resolute men who one day said No to all servitude and went into some desert.

The poverty and austerity of Saint Francis were no mere veneer of asceticism, but something much more radical: a refusal to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled.

Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge.