ACEDIA • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Acedia

"Acedia" Quotes from Famous Books

... to hand on to others what he knew.' (Geiger.) It is an appropriate remark of Hettner's, that the phrase, 'he has discovered his heart,' might serve as a motto for Petrarch's songs and sonnets. He knew that he had that sentimental disorder which he called 'acedia,' and wished to be rid of it. This word has a history of its own. To the Greeks, to Apollonius, for instance,[4] it meant carelessness, indifference; and, joined with the genitive [Greek: nooio]—that is, of the mind—it meant, ...

— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... his own experience, describes the acedia, or listlessness of mind and body, to which a monk was exposed, when he sighed to find himself alone. Saepiusque egreditur et ingreditur cellam, et Solem velut ad occasum tardius properantem crebrius ...

— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... adorned. He who has received this lively zeal from God is removed far from the fifth deadly sin—lukewarmness and gloominess towards the virtues necessary for salvation. [Footnote: The best account in English of the deadly sin of acedia, too much neglected in modern religious teaching, is to be found in Bishop Paget's Spirit of Discipline.] And sometimes this lively zeal disperses heaviness and sluggishness of the bodily temperament. ...

— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge