Quotes about nuns

Convent. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.

— Ambrose Bierce

The convent, which belongs to the West as it does to the East, to antiquity as it does to the present time, to Buddhism and Muhammadanism as it does to Christianity, is one of the optical devices whereby man gains a glimpse of infinity.

— Victor Hugo

A nun, at best, is only half a woman, just as a priest is only half a man.

— H. L. Mencken

Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, sober steadfast, and demure, all in a robe of darkest grain, flowing with majestic train.

— John Milton

She gave up beauty in her tender youth, gave all her hope and joy and pleasant ways; she covered up her eyes lest they should gaze on vanity, and chose the bitter truth.

— Christina Rossetti

The sight of a Black nun strikes their sentimentality; and, as I am unalterably rooted in native ground, they consider me a work of primitive art, housed in a magical color; the incarnation of civilized, anti-heathenism, and the fruit of a triumphing idea.

— Alice Walker