Fasting Quotes

1. "If you study the Talmud you please God even more than you do by praying or fasting."
Author: Abraham Cahan

2. ". . .fasting gives me singularly happy afternoons."
Author: Adalbert De Vogüé

3. "And how long did you have to starve in a cave to come to that conclusion?" I ask, sorry about the way my voice sounded much snottier than intended. It's not his fault I find myself here. Still, when Paloma said I'd have to change my diet in order to purify myself, I didn't realize that meant fasting in a dark, abandoned cave until I pass out."
Author: Alyson Noel

4. "Do you know what is better than charity and fasting and prayer? It is keeping peace and good relations between people, as quarrels and bad feelings destroy mankind."
Author: Anonymous

5. "He that lives upon hope will die fasting."
Author: Benjamin Franklin

6. "In vain do we seek tranquility in the desert; temptations are always with us; our passions, represented by the demons, never let us alone: those monsters created by the heart, those illusions produced by the mind, those vain specters that are our errors and our lies always appear before us to seduce us; they attack us even in our fasting or our mortifications, in other words, in our very strength."
Author: Charles De Montesquieu

7. "If you are in the mountains alone for some time, many days at minimum, & it helps if you are fasting. The forest grows tired of its weariness towards you; it resumes its inner life and allows you to see it. Near dusk the faces in tree bark cease hiding, and stare out at you. The welcoming ones and also the malevolent, open in their curiosity. In your camp at night you are able to pick out a distinct word now and then from the muddled voices in creek water, sometimes an entire sentence of deep import. The ghosts of animals reveal themselves to you without prejudice to your humanity. You see them receding before you as you walk the trail their shapes beautiful and sad."
Author: Charles Frazier

8. "Reading has a kernel to it, and the mere shed is little worth. In prayer there is such a thing as praying in prayer—a praying that is in the bowels of the prayer. So in praise there is a praising in song, an inward fire of intense devotion which is the life of the hallelujah. It is so in fasting: there is a fasting which is not fasting, and there is an inward fasting, a fasting of the soul, which is the soul of fasting. It is even so with the reading of the Scriptures. There is an interior reading, a kernel reading—a true and living reading of the Word. This is the soul of reading; and, if it be not there, the reading is a mechanical exercise, and profits nothing."
Author: Charles H. Spurgeon

9. "Having found the book which has a message for us, let us not be guilty of the folly of saying we have read it. We might as well say we have breakfasted, as if breakfasting on one day should last us for every day! The book that helps us deserves many readings, for assimilation comes by slow degrees."
Author: Charlotte Mason

10. "I won't be stuck in traffic 'til I see how rugged my path isAnd right now I'm loving how fast my troubles are fastingNo they don't bother me oh realizing I'm psychopathicA wild beast, baby I'm gladly running afterYes a thing called peace outlasting any madnessThe devil fears me oh he's feelingLike a fragment of a fractionNo he won't come near me'Cause his hat trick's out of practice"
Author: Criss Jami

11. "Solitude well practiced will break the power of busyness, haste, isolation, and loneliness. You will see that the world is not on your shoulders after all. Your will find yourself, and God will find you in new ways. Silence also brings Sabbath to you. It completes solitude, for without it you cannot be alone. Far from being a mere absence, silence allows the reality of God to stand in the midst of your life. God does not ordinarily compete for our attention. IN silence we come to attend. Lastly, fasting is done that we many consciously experience the direct sustenance of God to our body and our whole person."
Author: Dallas Willard

12. "Laboratory tests are the next set of important numbers to know. Here are the key lab test numbers you need to know:   1. Complete blood count   2. General metabolic panel with fasting blood sugar and lipid panel   3. HgA1C   4. Vitamin D   5. Thyroid panel   6. C-reactive protein"
Author: Daniel G. Amen

13. "Celibacy,fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude and the whole train of monkish virtues...Stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper...A gloomy hair-brained enthusiast, after his death, may have a place in the calendar, but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delerious and dismal as himself."
Author: David Hume

14. "?? ??????? ???????? ???? ?? ??????, ??? ??????? ?????? ??? ???? ?????? . ????? ??? ???? ?? ??????? ?? ???? ????????????? ?????, ??? ???? ???????? ? ?????? ???? ???? ?????. ?????? ?? ???? ??????? ?????? ???????, ??? ???? ???? ?? ???? ???? ??????Real filth is the one inside. The rest simply washes off. There is only one type of dirt that cannot be cleansed with pure waters, and that is the stain of hatred and bigotry contaminating the soul. You can purify your body through abstinence and fasting, but only love will purify your heart."
Author: Elif Shafak

15. "Down on your knees, and thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love."
Author: Euripides

16. "Periodic fasting can help clear up the mind and strengthen the body and the spirit."
Author: Ezra Taft Benson

17. "We all colour devotion according to our own likings and dispositions. One man sets great value on fasting, and believes himself to be leading a very devout life, so long as he fasts rigorously, although the while his heart is full of bitterness;–and while he will not moisten his lips with wine, perhaps not even with water, in his great abstinence, he does not scruple to steep them in his neighbour's blood, through slander and detraction."
Author: Francis De Sales

18. "We must unceasingly ask for [perseverance] by making use of the means which God has taught us for obtaining it: prayer, fasting, almsgiving, frequenting the sacraments, association with good companions, and hearing and reading Holy Scripture."
Author: Francis De Sales

19. "Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy."
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

20. "Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you."
Author: George Orwell

21. "The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbour by his own nature."
Author: Henri Frédéric Amiel

22. "If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do."
Author: Hermann Hesse

23. "What is meditation? What is leaving one's body? What is fasting? What is holding one's breath? It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented coconut-milk. Then he won't feel his self any more, then he won't feel the pains of life any more, then he finds a short numbing of the senses. When he falls asleep over his bowl of rice-wine, he'll find the same what Siddhartha and Govinda find when they escape their bodies through long exercises, staying in the non-self."
Author: Hermann Hesse

24. "You're quite right there," he said. "I have practiced abstinence myself for years, and had my time of fasting, too, but now I find myself once more beneath the sign of Aquarius, a dark and humid constellation."
Author: Hermann Hesse

25. "The candidate was required to prepare himself by confession, fasting, and passing the night in prayer."
Author: Horatio Alger

26. "You priests. You're all the same. You think fasting helps you think about God, when anyone who can cook would tell you that fasting just makes you think about food."
Author: Joanne Harris

27. "Therefore bread was created for the glory of Christ. Hunger and thirst were created for the glory of Christ. And fasting was created for the glory of Christ.Which means that bread magnifies Christ in two ways: by being eaten with gratitude for his goodness, and by being forfeited out of hunger for God himself. When we eat, we taste the emblem of our heavenly food—the Bread of Life. And when we fast we say, "I love the Reality above the emblem." In the heart of the saint both eating and fasting are worship. Both magnify Christ."
Author: John Piper

28. "But it would be a great mistake to think that the awakening of desire for the Bridegroom would produce a wave of monastic withdrawal into the fasting and prayer of passive waiting. That is not what the awakening of desire for Christ would produce. It would produce a radical, new commitment to complete the task of world evangelization, no matter what the cost. And fasting would not become a pacifistic discipline for private hopes, but a fearsome missionary weapon in the fight of faith."
Author: John Piper

29. "Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It is that rarest of phenomena, a Jewish festival without food. Instead it is a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment when, collectively and repeatedly, we confess our sins and pray to be written into God's Book of Life."
Author: Jonathan Sacks

30. "I would that ye should come unto Christ, who is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation, and the power of his redemption. Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him, and continue in fasting and praying, and endure to the end; and as the Lord liveth ye will be saved."
Author: Joseph Smith Jr.

31. "And what of our understanding?" he demanded. "The handfasting?"Lizzie's heart skipped a beat. She swallowed down her fear and lifted her chin. "I've no' cried off if that is what you mean. You sent me a bonnet--""Woman, I've never in my life imagine one could attach so much meaning to a bloody bonnet It was a hat! No' a jewel, no' a horse--""And I am still waiting to hear you say that you esteem me," she said stubbornly. "If ye donna, I will return to Thorntree today and you have my vow I shall never bother you again.""I donna esteem you! he cried heavenward, and Lizzie's heart lurched. "What is in that head of yours, lass? I love you!"
Author: Julia London

32. "Wherever you are, you must be very happy; because I am fasting for your happiness forever"
Author: M.F. Moonzajer

33. "Jerome was a marvelous advocate of chastity: yet hear his confession: "O, how often have I thought myself to be in the midst of the vain delights and pleasures of Rome, even when I was in the wild wilderness." Again, "I, who for fear of hell had condemned myself to such a prison, thought myself oftentimes to be dancing among young women, when I had no other company, but scorpions and wild beasts. My face was pale with fasting, but my mind was inflamed with desires in my cold body: and although my flesh was half-dead already, yet the flames of fleshly lust, boiled within me, etc."
Author: Martin Luther

34. "Whether we are feasting or fasting or somewhere in between, food should have a sacred role in our lives. It can be something we sacrifice, something we savor, something we share, and through it all we can remain fulfilled because we are grounded in God, the only One who can satisfy our hungry hearts."
Author: Mary DeTurris Poust

35. "God, who is faithful, allows his friends to fall frequently into weakness only in order to remove from them any prop on which they might lean. For a loving person it would be a great joy to be able to achieve many great feats, whether keeping vigils, fasting, performing other ascetical practices or doing major, difficult and unusual works. For them this is a great joy, support and source of hope so that their works become a product and a support upon which they can lean. But it is precisely this which our Lord wishes to take from them so that he alone will be their help and support . . . in no way do our works serve to make God give us anything or do anything for us. Our Lord wishes his friends to be freed from such an attitude, and thus he removes their support from them so that they must henceforth find their support only in him."
Author: Meister Eckhart

36. "Just as ceremonial fasting was a legitimate means for getting God's attention (Mt 6:16-18; Ac 13:2-3; 14:23), the casting of lots was a legitimate means for inviting God to intercede on a matter. (Pr 18:18) It was not expected that God should intervene every time (1Sam 28:6), but the ceremonial casting of lots was an invitation for God to participate in the final decision. (page 21)"
Author: Michael Ben Zehabe

37. "When he commissioned me to transcribe the Life of St. Peter of Corishia, who after five days of fasting saw unaging light, it was dusk and the birds streaked down into their nests in the bushes like black lightning. My thoughts soared up at the same speed, and I felt the strength was not in me to combat my burgeoning sense of power. I sat down to transcribe the Life of St. Peter of Corishia, and when I reached the part about the days of the fast, instead of 5 I wrote 50 and gave the transcription to the young monk. He took it, singing, and read it that same evening; the next day, word spread through the gorge that the monk Longin had embarked upon a major fast...On the fifty-first day, when they buried Longin at the Annunciation in the foothills, I decided never to takepen in hand again. I looked with horror at the inkwell and thought: Too many bones in too tight a soul."
Author: Milorad Pavić

38. "I commit her to memory. When I'm alone, I feel a strange yearning, the hunger of a man fasting not because he believes but because he's ashamed. Not the cleansing hunger of the devout, but the feverish hunger of the hypocrite. I let her go every evening only because there's nothing I can do to stop her."
Author: Mohsin Hamid

39. "Sinking, sinking, drinking water. When everyone in the village was fasting a long month,when not a grain, not a drop of water passed between the parched lips of any able-bodied man, woman or child over the age of ten, when the sun was hotter than the cooking pot and dusk was just a febrile wish, the hypocrite went down to the pond to duck his head, to dive and sink, to drink and sink a little lower. p. 105"
Author: Monica Ali

40. "It's clearly more important to treat one's fellow man well than to be always praying and fasting and touching one's head to a prayer mat."
Author: Naguib Mahfouz

41. "Having soon discovered to be great, I must appear so, and therefore studiously avoided mixing in society, and wrapped myself in mystery, devoting my time to fasting and prayer."
Author: Nat Turner

42. "How much more of the mosque, of prayer and fasting?Better go drunk and begging round the taverns.Khayyam, drink wine, for soon this clay of yoursWill make a cup, bowl, one day a jar.When once you hear the roses are in bloom,Then is the time, my love, to pour the wine;Houris and palaces and Heaven and Hell-These are but fairy-tales, forget them all."
Author: Omar Khayyam

43. "For the standard of Christian life was to be strained to a higher pitch; more fasting was required, and more careful separation from the manners and enjoyments of the world; celibacy and martyrdom had great value set upon them, and second marriages were prohibited."
Author: Robert Rainy

44. "I'm kind of like a middle mix between a warrior diet and a Paleo diet, so I only eat once a day and it's at night - so kind of like interval fasting. But I eat until I'm full, I eat as much as I want, and I really don't eat anything that you couldn't find, you know, 10,000 years ago."
Author: Ronda Rousey

45. "What is the benefit of fasting in our body while filling our souls with innumerable evils? He who does not play at dice, but spends his leisure otherwise, what nonsense does he not utter? What absurdities does he not listen to? Leisure without the fear of God is, for those who do not know how to use time, the teacher of wickedness."
Author: Saint Basil

46. "He needed so much to weep. All the distrust of life which misfortunes had brought to the little Värmland boy needed tears to wash it away. Distrust that love and joy, beauty and strength blossomed on the earth, distrust in himself, all must go, all did go, for it was Easter; the dead lived and the Spirit of Fasting would never again come into power."
Author: Selma Lagerlöf

47. "After a sound drubbing followed by half a day's fasting, I felt more like laughing than like crying; and, in half a while, all was forgotten and my wickedness began afresh and worse than ever."
Author: Stijn Streuvels

48. "We must master our egoism, and through this mastery, step outside ourselves and educate ourselves in giving. Fasting requires that we rediscover all that is alive around us, and reconcile ourselves with our environment."
Author: Tariq Ramadan

49. "Fasting is, first and foremost, an exercise for identifying and managing adversity in all its forms. With faith, in full conscience, fasting calls women and men to an extra degree of self-awareness."
Author: Tariq Ramadan

50. "Who is to say which is better--to hunger and be fed, or to be fed so continuously that you never know hunger? Sometimes a little fasting is good for the soul. Think of a cold drink of water after an afternoon in the hayfield."
Author: Zenna Henderson

Fasting Quotes Pictures