“Because of this, I feel I am performing a work of love, not of hostility. I do not aim to accuse the contemporary world and monasticism but to enrich the world with the values that monasticism can and should contribute to it. Our world needs monks who are different from itself. Please God, this essay will help them to sing more clearly and beautifully the part they have to sing in the immense symphony of the present time. To Love Fasting: The Monastic Experience(prologue)”

“In fact, according to physicians, the functioning of the digestion depends less on the brain than on hormonal mechanisms and autoregulators. However, during a fast, the digestive system gets an increasing rest. About ten hours after a meal, the contractions stop and the feeling of hunger disappears; five or six hours later the glucose stops coming directly from the intestines and begins to produce itself from the reserve of glycogen contained in the liver. From then on, the body works on itself in a closed circuit, becoming itself the source of the energy it uses. Instead of destroying an appropriating to himself nourishment taken from outside, man enters a state of nonviolence and detachment relative to the outside world.”

“Instead of destroying and appropriating to himself nourishment taken from outside, man enters a state of nonviolence and detachment relative to the outside world.”

“Eating three times a day means takingon, almost without respite, the work of assimilation.”

“. . .fasting gives me singularly happy afternoons.”

“In the afternoon the digestion of the meal deprives me of the incomparable lightness which characterizes the fast days.”

“When I walk in the forest just before the meal, while reciting the scriptural phrase that I "meditate" for that day, spiritual joy comes over me as if by appointment.”