Morris West Quotes

To remember non-attachment is to remember what freedom is all about. If we get attached, even to a beautiful state of being, we are caught, and ultimately we will suffer. We work to observe anything that comes our way, experience it while it is here, and be able to let go of it.

You can't ever get everything you want. It is impossible. Luckily, there is another option: You can learn to control your mind, to step outside of the endless cycle of desire and aversion.

The first rule of negotiation is to always be willing to walk away from the deal. The first rule of happiness is to not be attached to pleasing moments.

If you have to have it, it's ego. If you have to not have it, it's ego. Hold life lightly and it will deliver what you need and release what you don't.

When you learn not to want things so badly, life comes to you.

What I feel best about is that while I enjoy what I have and don't want to lose it, I also don't need it.

I think you have to let go of this idea that you can be precious about everything, and let it be the abstract mess that it is.

Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can only be felt if you don't set any condition.

I don't believe there is any point in holding on to too many things in life.

Unending joy is actually closer to us than our own skin, and there is nothing we have to do or get or be to experience it. All we have to do is stop driving it away.

I see what happens when one gets very attached to material things. That's just not what my life is.

Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.

When you relinquish the desire to control your future, you can have more happiness.

Enjoy doing nothing, and you can enjoy doing anything. Enjoy having nothing, and you can enjoy whatever you have.

It was my dream that I had clenched in a fist of discontent and wouldn't release. But time had now pried every finger open. There is peace in an open and upraised hand that isn't grasping for anything.

I'm no Buddhist monk, and I can't say I'm in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I've written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn't want or need, not all I did.

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness.

I keep my hands empty for the sake of what I have had in them.

The joy of losing consists in this: Where there are no expectations, there is no disappointment.

Those who are possessed by nothing possess everything.

When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you.

One of the things I noticed in my career that gave me a lot of happiness early on was realising we don't have any control.

I am happy with what comes, I don't have expectations of any stature.

My motto is never to hold on to anything. I accept and then let go: not just the negatives, but the praise, too. Or it'll get to my head.

When you focus on want, you become an endless cycle of wants. To get, simply release, and then gently invite.