Dallas Willard Quotes

Protect me from what I want.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

O never give me over to my own heart's desires, nor let me follow my own imaginations!

If you have a great many desires, you will gradually eliminate them one by one, until you allow certain desires to dominate and the others to die away.

If he had his wits about him Bunny would surely keep his mouth shut; but now, with his subconscious mind knocked loose from its perch and flapping in the hollow corridors of his skull as erratically as a bat, there was no way to be sure of anything he might do.

It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable--when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us--that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.

The mind scolds the heart, which makes excuses and goes its own way.

We have to figure this out, Jackson, so leash the lust.” His chin went up as he stared down at her. “Woman, you ask the impossible.” “Do it anyway!

We deal with our mind from morning till evening, and it can be our best friend or our worst enemy.

By annihilating desires, you annihilate the mind.

It is in your power to withdraw yourself whenever you desire. Perfect tranquility within consists in the good ordering of the mind, the realm of your own.

War starts in the mind, not in the body.

The mind and heart is the field upon which war is waged within us. If we can stop that internal fear-based battle, then those outside of us will be affected as well.

If you keep your attention in the body as much as possible, you will be anchored in the Now. You won't lose yourself in the external world, and you won't lose yourself in your mind. Thoughts and emotions, fears and desires may still be there to some extent, but they won't take you over.

In the same way that rain breaks into a house with a bad roof, desire breaks into the mind that has not been practising meditation.

My desires are foolish. The things I want are better kept to myself. The hand of silence is steady. The hard blade of silence is clean like night. The code is absolute. Silence is eternal and patient. Silence never makes a fool of itself like I have so many times.

You either control your mind or it controls you.

the way to wean any one from a desire is not by condemnation of it.

More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an undisciplined mind does greater harm.

I want you and I hate wanting things and I especially hate admitting I want them.

Forced to define 'irrational subconscious,' I would say that it is a small padded room inside all of us, where the only furnishing is a small card table, and the only thing on the card table is a revolver loaded with flexible bullets.

The enemy is always in the mind.

The cause of happiness and the solution to our problems do not lie in knowledge of material things. Happiness and suffering are states of mind, and so their main causes cannot be found outside the mind. If we want to be truly happy and free from suffering, we must learn how to control our mind.

It is a base thing for the countenance to be obedient and to regulate and compose itself as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be regulated and composed by itself.