11 Quotes by Anthony Bloom

What is the basic difference between saying 'I know that God exists' and saying 'I know that love exists'?

To pluck a flower means to take possession of it, and it also means to kill it.

...as long as you imagine you are rich there is nothing to thank god for, and you cannot be aware of being loved. Too often the kind of thanksgiving we offer is too much a general thanksgiving, and the kind of repentance we bring to God is too much a general repentance.

...one of our great spiritual guides, Theophan the Recluse, says: 'The awareness of God shall be with you as clearly as a toothache.

Because we don't know yet how to act without an outer reason, we discover that we don't know what to do with ourselves, and then we begin to be increasingly bored. So first of all, you must learn to sit with yourselves and face boredom, drawing all the possible conclusions.

In the position of tension in which we are, between churchmanship and citizenship, our churchmanship is much freer than if we had better harmony between Church and State.

Have you never noticed that to be rich always means an impoverishment on another level? It is enough for you to say ‘I have this watch, it is mine’, and close your hand on it, to be in possession of a watch and to have lost a hand. And if you close your mind on your riches, if you close your heart so that you can keep what is in it safe, never to lose it, then it becomes as small as the thing on which you have closed yourself in.

As long as we ourselves are real, as long as we are truly ourselves, God can be present and can do something with us. But the moment we try to be what we are not, there is nothing left to say or have; we become a fictitious personality, an unreal presence, and this unreal presence cannot be approached by God.

Because we don’t know yet how to act without an outer reason, we discover that we don’t know what to do with ourselves, and then we begin to be increasingly bored. So first of all, you must learn to sit with yourselves and face boredom, drawing all the possible conclusions.