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Her rising wrath however, and the fire of her asceticism, she extinguished within herself by an extraordinary effort. Collecting her thoughts in a moment, her heart possessed with sorrow and rage, she thus addressed her lord in anger, looking at him, 'Knowing everything, O monarch, how thou, like an inferior person, thus say that thou knowest it not?
The teachings of asceticism which had such power among Christians until the sixteenth century are again heard under a different guise in at least one of the modern cults most successful in the United States. Neo-Malthusianism is found exemplified in the two-child families of the nobles of France and Germany and the rich of New England.
I believe all manner of asceticism to be the vilest blasphemy blasphemy towards the whole of the human race. I believe in the flesh and the body, which is worthy of worship to see a perfect human body unveiled causes a sense of worship. The ascetics are the only persons who are impure. Increase of physical beauty is attended by increase of soul beauty.
The abandonment of austerities as a means of salvation or spiritual power was the natural fruit of past experiments that had proved the uselessness of asceticism merely for the sake of acquiring a spirit of self-denial.
Man is so constituted that the only things which make a deep impression are those that the body also feels. The teacher's blow has a greater effect than his words, a gift produces more willingness than an entreaty, and the tendency toward asceticism and penance is genuinely Christian, and belongs to many a people of a different faith.
The habits of the day, voluptuous yet hardy, fostered this one-sided development of the arts; while the asceticism of the Middle Ages had yielded to a pagan cult of sensuality. To draw un bel corpo ignudo with freedom was now the ne plus ultra of achievement. How to express thought or to indicate the subtleties of emotion, had ceased to be the artist's aim.
It may seem a matter for surprise that the Church which, as we know, had shown an ever greater tendency to reverence virginity and to cast contumely on the sexual relationship, should yet, parallel with that movement and with the growing influence of asceticism, have shown so great an anxiety to capture marriage and to confer on it a public, dignified, and religious character.
He sees very clearly how many of the Catholic practices are what he calls "ossified organisms." Why did he set up a lay monk as a model for 20th century Christians who long to devote their lives to uplifting their fellow-men? Did he not note the artificiality of asceticism the waste of energy that comes with fasts and mortification of the flesh and morbidly pious excitement?
It would be a mortification if it brought any suffering, but I enjoy this suffering, it gives me back my mind; it prevents my thoughts from stopping: what would one not do to attain such happiness?" Asceticism is the necessary ante-chamber to spiritual perfection.
How is it also that no dissensions arose amongst those illustrious rulers of men, all attached to one wife, viz., Krishna? O thou of the wealth of asceticism, I wish to hear everything in detail regarding the behaviour towards one another of those rulers of men after their union with Krishna.
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