# Quote — Anthony De Mello, The Way to Love

> If you want to know what it means to be happy, look at a flower, a bird, a child; they are perfect images of the kingdom. For they live from moment to moment in the eternal now with no past and no future. So they are spared the guilt and anxiety that so torment human beings and they are full of the sheer joy of living, taking delight not so much in persons or things as in life itself. As long as your happiness is caused or sustained by something or someone outside of you, you are still in the land of the dead. The day you are happy for no reason whatsoever, the day you find yourself taking delight in everything and in nothing, you will know that you have found the land of unending joy called the kingdom.

- Author: [Anthony De Mello](https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-de-mello.md)
- Book: [The Way to Love](https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-de-mello/the-way-to-love.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anthony_de_Mello#The_Way_to_Love_(1995)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-de-mello/the-way-to-love/if-you-want

## More from this book

> Mostly the discontent that you feel comes from not having enough of something — you are dissatisfied because you think you do not have enough money or power or success or fame or virtue or love or holiness. This is not the discontent that leads to the joy of the kingdom. Its source is greed and ambition and its fruit is restlessness and frustration. The day you are discontented not because you want more of something but without knowing what it is you want; when you are sick at heart of everything you are pursuing so far and you are sick of the pursuing itself, then your heart will attain a great clarity, an insight that will cause you mysteriously to delight in everything and in nothing.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-de-mello/the-way-to-love/mostly-the-discontent.md)

> If you search within your heart, you will find something there that will make it possible for you to understand: a spark of disenchantment and discontent, which if fanned into flame will become a raging forest fire that will burn up the whole of the illusory world you are living in, thereby unveiling to your wondering eyes the kingdom that you have always lived in unsuspectingly.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-de-mello/the-way-to-love/if-you-search.md)

> It is the desire for "the more" that prevents clear thinking, whereas if we are discontent, not because we want something, but without knowing what we want; if we are dissatisfied with our jobs, with making money, with seeking position and power, with tradition, with what we have and with what we might have; if we are dissatisfied, not with anything in particular but with everything, then I think we shall find that our discontent brings clarity. When we don't accept or follow, but question, investigate, penetrate, there is an insight out of which comes creativity, joy.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-de-mello/the-way-to-love/it-is-the.md)