“A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.”

“122. Happy is the monk who views the welfare and progress of all men with as much joy as if it were his own.”

“The supreme aristocrat is not the feudal lord in his castle but the contemplative monk in his cell.”

“Monk enters the studio and starts playing, the rest of the musicians join him. After few minutes of play the technician from his room shouts and stops the band. ]
Monk: "Why did we stop?"
Technician: "I thought you were rehearsing."
Monk: "Aren't we always?"”

“For their riches the monasteries came to be coveted by the Turkish invaders. They became special targets of the invaders’ greed. The Turks killed a large number of Buddhist monks in Nalanda, although some of the monks managed to escape to Nepal and Tibet.”

“The Devil was sick,—the Devil a monk would be;
The Devil was well,—the devil a monk was he.”

“There are only two kinds of freedom in the world; the freedom of the rich and powerful, and the freedom of the artist and the monk who renounces possessions.”

“Because monks come from the midst of purity, they consider as good and pure what does not arouse desire among other people.”

“When a monk complained about the world's evil, the Buddha stretched his hand toward the Earth: "on this Earth I attained Liberation."”

“There are several huge monasteries—of which Khang Phi is the greatest—dedicated to the preservation of knowledge. The monks do not sort it into good and evil knowledge, nor do they make moral judgments. They take the position that no knowledge is evil until someone chooses to do evil with it.”