Dallas Willard Quotes

... the deep experience of the lonely climb on the mountain of success brings a wealth beyond power to compute. To you all suffering is understandable and your heart opens wide in sympathy.

The pain is always bringing me a lesson. If I listen to the lesson when the pain is manageable, the pain won't get gargantuan and flatten me entirely, because I will have received the message at the center. I receive it as gently as I can, because the cruelest thing that I do to myself is try to push myself through an experience.

The heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.

That's the way I try to live. I think it's the only way for human beings at this point in our evolution as souls, where everyone in their lifetime is going through stuff.

You have good days, you have bad days. But the main thing is to grow mentally.

Petty things don't bother me as much as they used to.

You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.

I've got a lot better at dropping emotions if something goes wrong, or right.

The measure of who we are is how we react to something that doesn't go our way.

Maturity is a compound of wisdom, goodwill, resilience, and creativity.

Conflicts bring experience and experience brings that growth in Grace which is not to be attained by any other means!

You will know how to stop suffering as soon as suffering ceases to be valuable. If you are in pain, you are being led.

It's definitely the biggest lesson - not to take things personally. But it's also the hardest one.

It sounds clichéd, but I think the greatest lesson is to not take things personally.

There's a lesson to be learned out of everything we go through in life. I recall when I left [Jack Gordon], and my mother was so upset. "How could you allow him to beat you? You should really be upset with him." And I said, "Mother, I can't be." She goes, "Why?" I said, "Because I can't harbor hatred in my heart." I was extremely religious and extremely naïve. God took me through that for a reason, for me to learn the outcome.

Remember also that it is not knowledge but the yearning for knowledge that makes for a complete, accomplished man. Such a man does not stand still but perseveres in the face of adversity, nor does he remain untouched by the pain cause by absence. On the contrary, he recognizes himself in each cry, uttered or repressed, in the smallest rift, in the most pressing need.

The more something upsets you, the more it is meant for you. When it no longer upsets you, it is no longer needed because the lesson is complete.

As a therapist, I know that when you're vulnerable, the best way to move on is to admit your vulnerability, don't beat yourself up for it, and try to find a way to analyze your vulnerability. Pull up your socks and try to do better for you and your family.

... learning humility is a prerequisite for grace.

Despite the obvious fault in the universe, it cannot be used as an excuse for not trying to be your best self. Instead, use unfairness as a starting point to be sure that your actions are the best you can muster, and find peace in navigating your time here with grace and humor whenever possible.

Failure isn't so bad if it doesn't attack the heart. Success is all right if it doesn't go to the head.

There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times.

Let the jerks of the world serve as the perfect example of what you don't want to be. You'll be a heck of a lot happier, and in the long run, there's a chance that other person at work will end up asking what your secret is. Why are you the happy one? In other words, don't let your thoughts think you. Besides, if you're really gonna get pissed, don't waste it on your family, friends, or coworkers, save it for something that really matters.

A bulging portfolio of spiritual experiences matters little if it does not have the power to sustain us through the inevitable moments of grief, loss, and change. Knowledge and achievements matter little if we do not yet know how to touch the heart of another and be touched. Wisdom is alive only as long as it is lived, understanding is liberating only as long as it is applied.