Quotes by Jesuit Priests - Page 2

Cautious silence is the refuge of good sense
Baltasar Gracián
For the advice in a joke is sometimes more useful than the most serious teaching.
Baltasar Gracián
He that has satisfied his thirst turns his back on the well.
Baltasar Gracián
Memory is not only unruly, leaving us in the lurch when most needed, but stupid as well, putting its nose into places where it is not wanted.
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
In our spreading materialist wasteland, more and more people thirst for contemplation, including political wheel-dealers, tycoons, and military top brass, stressed out by the rigors of their professions. Are we to suppose that everyone doing deep breathing on a meditation pillow is communing with the God of Christians? Not necessarily. What unites us to God is the practice of love. If prayer, or any other religious act, is not grounded in that, it is an offense to God.
Dean Brackley
We have eyelids but not earlids, for the ears are the portals of learning, and Nature wanted to keep them wide open.
Baltasar Gracián
Deal with people from whom you can learn
Baltasar Gracián
Keep your prayer simple. Whatever confuses or complicates prayer is probably best forgotten.
Mark Link
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
We see people and things not as they are, but as we are.
Anthony de Mello
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
A thought is a screen, not a mirror; that is why you live in a thought envelope, untouched by Reality.
Anthony de Mello
The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas. If you're ready to listen and if you're ready to be challenged, there's one thing that you can do, but no one can help you. What is this most important thing of all? It's called self-observation.
Anthony de Mello
Plato's proposals in this matter are abhorrent to all true Christians. His intentions were, of course, excellent, for he desired the greatest possible improvement of the human race; but his good intentions led him to the proposal of measures which are necessarily unacceptable and repugnant to all those who adhere to Christian principles concerning the value of the human personality and the sanctity of human life. Moreover, it by no means follows that what has been found successful in the breeding of animals, will also prove successful when applied to the human race, for man has a rational soul which is not intrinsically dependent on matter but is directly created by Almighty God. Does a beautiful soul always go with a beautiful body or a good character with a strong body? Again, if such measures were successful — and what does "successful" mean in this connection? — in the case of the human race, it does not follow that the Government has the right to apply such measures. Those who to-day follow, or would like to follow, in the footsteps of Plato, advocating, e.g. compulsory sterilisation of the unfit, have not, be it remembered, Plato's excuse, that he lied at a period anterior to the presentation of the Christian ideals and principles. — 230
Frederick Charles Copleston
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
Between optimism and pessimism, there is confidence in God.
Edmund Campion
If he had given away anything else, he would have been charged with indecent exposure.
Edmund Campion
A beautiful woman should break her mirror early.
Baltasar Gracián
Though such authority and respect shouldn't be handed to all and sundry, have in caution's innermost room a confidant, a faithful mirror, whose correction you value when disillusionment is necessary.
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
Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil.
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
Enlightenment is: absolute cooperation with the inevitable.
Anthony de Mello
People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change.
Anthony de Mello
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
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
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
Knowledge without courage is sterile.
Baltasar Gracián
Everybody was talking about the religious man who committed suicide. While no one in the monastery approved of the man's action, some say they admired his faith.Faith?" said the Master.He had the courage of his convictions, didn't he?"That was fanaticism, not faith. Faith demands a greater courage still: to reexamine one's convictions and reject them if they do not fit the facts.
Anthony de Mello
A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the other one.
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.
One should cultivate good habits of memory, for it is capable of making existence a Paradise or an Inferno.
Baltasar Gracián
God teaches the soul by pains and obstacles, not by ideas.
Jean-Pierre de Caussade
Folly consists not in committing Folly, but in being incapable of concealing it. All men make mistakes, but the wise conceal the blunders they have made, while fools make them public. Reputation depends more on what is hidden than on what is seen. If you can’t be good, be careful.
Baltasar Gracián
The one who would be constant in happiness must frequently change.
Anthony de Mello
When you come to see you are not as wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you are wiser today.
Anthony de Mello
Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.
Anthony de Mello
Be first the master of yourself
Baltasar Gracián
Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.
Baltasar Gracián
A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
Baltasar Gracián
I must not, like the quietists, reduce all religion to a denial of any specific action, despising all other means, since what makes perfection is God's order, and the means he ordains is best for the soul.
Jean-Pierre de Caussade
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
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
The genius of a composer is found in the notes of his music; but analyzing the notes will not reveal his genius. The poet's greatness is contained in his words; yet the study of his words will not disclose his inspiration. God reveals himself in creation; but scrutinize creation as minutely as you wish, you will not find God, any more than you will find the soul through careful examination of your body.
Anthony de Mello
Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description.
Anthony de Mello
Cunning grows in deceit at seeing itself discovered, and tries to deceive with truth itself.
Baltasar Gracián
The truths that matter most to us come always half spoken.
Baltasar Gracián
If what you seek is Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else.” “I know. An overwhelming passion for it.” “No. An unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong.
Anthony de Mello
Any time you are with anyone or think of anyone you must say to yourself: I am dying and this person too is dying, attempting the while to experience the truth of the words you are saying. If every one of you agrees to practice this, bitterness will die out, harmony will arise.
Anthony de Mello
[O]ther thinkers have philosophised since the time of Plato, but that does not destroy the interest and beauty of his philosophy
Frederick Charles Copleston
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
Never compete with someone who has nothing to lose.
Baltasar Gracián
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