Christy > Christy's Quotes

“Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift. ”
― Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

“These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness, and worship without awareness.”
― Anthony de Mello

“Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture. To acquire happiness you don't have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Then why don't you experience it? Because you've got to drop something. You've got to drop illusions. You don't have to add anything in order to be happy; you've got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Do you know where these things come from? From having identified with all kinds of labels!”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“The one who would be constant in happiness must frequently change.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“As the Arabs say, "The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“The Master made it his task to destroy systematically every
doctrine, every belief, every concept of the divine, for these
things, which were originally intended as pointers, were now
being taken as descriptions.

He loved to quote the Eastern saying "When the sage points
to the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger.”
― Anthony de Mello

“To be properly wicked, you do not have to break the Law. Just observe it to the letter.”
― Anthony de Mello, Taking Flight: A Book of Story Meditations

“Because left to its own devices life would never produce love, it would only lead you to attraction, from attraction to pleasure, then to attachment, to satisfaction, which finally leads to wearisomeness and boredom. Then comes a plateau. Then once again the weary cycle: attraction, pleasure, attachment, fulfillment, satisfaction, boredom. All of this mixed with the anxieties, the jealousies, the possessiveness, the sorrow, the pain, that make the cycle a roller coaster. When you have gone repeatedly around and around the cycle, a time finally comes when you have had enough and want to call a halt to the whole process. And if you are lucky enough not to run into something or someone else that catches your eye, you will have at least attained a fragile peace. That is the most that life can give you; and you can mistakenly equate this state with freedom and you die without ever having known what it means to be really free and to love.”
― Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love: Meditations for Life

“You must cultivate activities that you love. You must discover work that you do, not for its utility, but for itself, whether it succeeds or not, whether you are praised for it or not, whether you are loved and rewarded for it or not, whether people know about it and are grateful to you for it or not. How many activities can you count in your life that you engage in simply because they delight you and grip your soul? Find them out, cultivate them, for they are your passport to freedom and to love.”
― Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello

“There was an exhausted woodcutter who kept wasting time and energy chopping wood with a blunt ax because he did not have the time, he said, to stop and sharpen the blade.”
― Anthony de Mello, Taking Flight: A Book of Story Meditations

“If you love truth, be a lover of silence. Silence like the sunlight will illuminate you in God and will deliver you from the phantoms of ignorance.… In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then there is born something that draws us to silence.… If only you practice this, untold light will dawn on you in consequence … after a while a certain sweetness is born in the heart of this exercise and the body is drawn almost by force to remain in silence.”
― Anthony de Mello, Seek God Everywhere: Reflections on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius

“You’re never so centered on yourself as when you’re depressed.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“God went mad out of love for us. Then we must be very lovely. What we have stressed in the past is how lovely God must be that he can love us like this. But nobody has yet said how lovely we must be, that God could fall for us like this. Both are true.”
― Anthony de Mello, Seek God Everywhere: Reflections on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius

“When we feel isolated, disconnected, and lonely, we try to protect ourselves. In that mode, we want to connect, but our brain is attempting to override connection with self-protection. That means less empathy, more defensiveness, more numbing, and less sleeping.”
― Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone