“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)”

“Monasticism had transformed the humble work of discipleship into the meritorious activity of the saints, and the self-renunciation of discipleship into the flagrant spiritual self-assertion of the "religious." The world had crept into the very heart of the monastic life, and was once more making havoc. The monk's attempt to flee from the world turned out to be a subtle form of love for the world.”

“The Bible is clear here: I am to love my neighbor as myself, in the manner needed, in a practical way, in the midst of the fallen world, at my particular point of history. This is why I am not a pacifist. Pacifism in this poor world in which we live -- this lost world -- means that we desert the people who need our greatest help.”

“I love you, a nighean donn. I have loved ye from the moment I saw ye, I will love ye ’til time itself is done, and so long as you are by my side, I am well pleased wi’ the world.”

“To my mind, ‘magic’ is the hard-to-define quality of the things that stir up mystical feelings like amazement, curiosity, imagination, and above all wonder. Magic is that which renders something beautiful in a spiritual sense. It is that which makes one feel as if the world is more than it is presently understood to be, and yet at the same time the world is working itself out in a good and beautiful way. Magic underlies the relationship between us, and the greater immensities of birth and death. Thus the experience of being in the presence of something magical is an empowering, uplifting experience. Magic, understood this way, contributes meaning to life. ”

“Monasticism is really based on the idea that if you leave people, you leave the spirit of the world. But you do not. You can leave the world in a physical sense, you can leave the crowd and the people; but there in your lonely cell the spirit of the world may still be with you.”