Quotes by Jesuit Priests - Page 2

We see people and things not as they are, but as we are.
Anthony de Mello
Be first the master of yourself
Baltasar Gracián
Cautious silence is the refuge of good sense
Baltasar Gracián
We were brought up to need people. For what? For acceptance, approval, appreciation, applause - for what they call success. Those are words that do not correspond to reality. They are conventions, things that are invented, but we don't realize that they don't correspond to reality. What is success? It is what one group decided is a good thing. Another group will decide the same thing is bad.
Anthony de Mello
If he had given away anything else, he would have been charged with indecent exposure.
Edmund Campion
The one who would be constant in happiness must frequently change.
Anthony de Mello
The wise have a solid sense of silence and the ability to keep a storehouse of secrets. Their capacity and character are respected.
Baltasar Gracián
Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.
Anthony de Mello
For the advice in a joke is sometimes more useful than the most serious teaching.
Baltasar Gracián
When it comes to ourselves, we often have a blind spot. That is, we fail to see ourselves as others see us. We fail to recognize our most obvious traits: our strengths, weaknesses, mannerisms.
Mark Link
When you are guilty, it is not your sins you hate but yourself.
Anthony de Mello
At twenty a man is a peacock at thirty a lion at forty a camel at fifty a serpent at sixty a dog at seventy an ape at eighty nothing at all.
Baltasar Gracián
Respect yourself is you would have others respect you.
Baltasar Gracián
A prudent man will think more important what fate has conceded to him than what it has denied.
Baltasar Gracián
Between optimism and pessimism, there is confidence in God.
Edmund Campion
Say farewell to luck when winning. It is the way of the gamblers of reputation. Quite as important as a gallant advance is a well-planned retreat. Lock up your winnings when they are enough, or when great. Continuous luck is always suspect; more secure is that which changes. Though half bitter and half sweet, it is more satisfying to the taste. The more luck pyramids, the greater the danger of slip and collapse. For luck always compensates her intensity by her brevity. Fortune wearies of carrying anyone long upon her shoulders.
Baltasar Gracián
The great art of giving consists in this the gift should cost very little and yet be greatly coveted, so that it may be the more highly appreciated.
Baltasar Gracián
A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
Baltasar Gracián
Philosophy is the critically reflective, systematically articulated attempt to illumine our human experience in depth and set it in a vision of the whole.
W. Norris Clarke
Good things when short are twice as good.
Baltasar Gracián
It requires as much caution to tell the truth as to conceal it.
Baltasar Gracián
As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. … That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.
Anthony de Mello
Do not show your wounded finger for everything will knock up against it.
Baltasar Gracián
There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed. All that takes place within us, around us, or through us, contains and conceals His divine action.
Jean-Pierre de Caussade
At his funeral the priest's words applied signally to him: 'The Christian Brothers are a body of men who live without luxury, labour without emolument, and die without notice, that they might stamp God's image on the soul of youth. That surely is a splendid vocation.
Edmund Campion
Cunning grows in deceit at seeing itself discovered, and tries to deceive with truth itself.
Baltasar Gracián
Deal with people from whom you can learn
Baltasar Gracián
Of what use is it to be tolerant of others if you are convinced that you are right and everyone who disagrees with you is wrong? That isn’t tolerance but condescension.
Anthony de Mello
Perfect love casts out fear. Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.
Anthony de Mello
There is no wilderness like a life without friends friendship multiplies blessings and minimizes misfortunes it is a unique remedy against adversity and it soothes the soul.
Baltasar Gracián
A thought is a screen, not a mirror; that is why you live in a thought envelope, untouched by Reality.
Anthony de Mello
Time and I against any two.
Baltasar Gracián
I have wandered freely in mystical traditions that are not religious and have been profoundly influenced by them. It is my church, however, that I keep returning, for she is my spiritual home.
Anthony de Mello S.J.
Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.
Baltasar Gracián
The greatest wisdom often consists in ignorance.
Baltasar Gracián
He that has satisfied his thirst turns his back on the well.
Baltasar Gracián
All simple souls must admire and respect one another, saying: 'Let us proceed each one along our path to the same goal, united in purpose and by means of God's order which, in its great variety, is in us all.
Jean-Pierre de Caussade
Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.
Baltasar Gracián
True friendship multiplies the good in life and divides its evils. Strive to have friends, for life without friends is like life on a desert island... To find one real friend in a lifetime is a good fortune; to keep him is a blessing.
Baltasar Gracián
People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it.
Anthony de Mello
We human beings are story-tellers, we pass on our values through the stories we tell. This is particularly true of Catholics, who get their identity through their histories, which they see as salvation history linking them to the saving actions of Christ. So, for Catholics, doing history – passing on the values by telling stories – is a pastoral imperative. We must look where we have been in order to know where we are going.
Edmund Campion
The Master made it his task to destroy systematically everydoctrine, every belief, every concept of the divine, for thesethings, which were originally intended as pointers, were nowbeing taken as descriptions.He loved to quote the Eastern saying "When the sage pointsto the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger.
Anthony de Mello
Even knowledge has to be in fashion and where it is not it is wise to affect ignorance.
Baltasar Gracián
Harness the imagination: Sometimes curbing her, sometimes giving her rein, for she is the whole of happiness. She sets to rights even the understanding. She sinks to tyranny, not satisfied with mere faith, but demanding works. Thus she becomes the mistress of life itself. She does so with pleasure or with pain, according to the nonsense presented. She makes people contented or discontented with themselves. By dangling before some nothing but the specter of their eternal suffering, she becomes the scourge of these fools. To others she shows nothing but fortune and romance, while merrily laughing. Of all this she is capable if not held in check by the wisest of wills.
Baltasar Gracián
Little said is soon amended. There is always time to add a word never to withdraw one.
Baltasar Gracián
Gift better than Himself God doth not know,Gift better than God no man can see;This gift doth here the giver given bestowGift to this gift let each receiver be;God is my gift, Himself He freely gave me,God's gift am I, and none but God shall have me.
Robert Southwell