De Mello Anthony Quotes

#1. These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness, and worship without awareness. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#2. The only way to change is by changing your understanding. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#3. What is my identity ?" "Nothing," said the Master. "You mean that I am an emptiness and a void?" said the incredulous disciple. "Nothing that can be labeled." said the Master. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#4. When you cling, life is destroyed; when you hold on to anything, you cease to live. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#5. There were rules in the monastery, but the Master always warned against the tyranny of the law. 'Obedience keeps the rules,' he would say. 'Love knows when to break them.' - Author: Anthony De Mello

#6. I'm going to write a book someday and the title will be I'm an Ass, You're an Ass. That's the most liberating, wonderful thing in the world, when you openly admit you're an ass. It's wonderful. When people tell me, You're wrong I say, What can you expect of an ass? - Author: Anthony De Mello

#7. I wish to become a teacher of the Truth. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#8. In many ways we were drugged when we were young. We were brought up to need people. For what? For acceptance, approval, appreciation, applause. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#9. You only change what you understand. What you do not understand and are not aware of, you repress. You dont change. But when you understand it, it changes. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#10. Don't try to make them happy, you'll only get in trouble. Don't try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it irritates the pig. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#11. Pleasant experiences make life delightful. Painful experiences lead to growth. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#12. When I speak, you must not listen to the words, my dear. Listen to the Silence. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#13. We do not have a fear of the unknown. What we fear is giving up the known. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#14. If the heart is unobstructed, the result is love. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#15. What can I do to see Reality as it is?" The master smiled and said, "I have good news and bad news for you, my friend." "What's the bad news?" "There's nothing you can do to see it is a gift." "And what's the good news?" "There's nothing you can do to see it is a gift. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#16. This is what is ultimate in our human knowledge of God, to know that we do not know. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#17. You see persons and things not as they are but as you are. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#18. A disciple said to him, "I am ready, in the quest for God , to give up anything: wealth, friends, family, country, life itself. What else can a person give up?" The Master calmly replied, "One's beliefs about God. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#19. There are two ways to wash dishes: One is to wash them in order to make them clean; the other is to wash them in order to wash them. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#20. You are never in love with anyone. You're only in love with your prejudiced and hopeful idea of that person. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#21. What is the work of a Master?" said a solemn-faced visitor. "To teach people to laugh ," said the Master gravely. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#22. All conflict comes from attachment. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#23. You can never be free
as long as you have an ego to defend. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#24. Have you ever attempted to organize something like peace? The moment you do, you have power conflicts and group wars within the organization. The only way to have peace is to let it grow wild. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#25. Concepts are always frozen. Reality flows. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#26. Understand your darkness and it will vanish; then you will know what light is. Understand your nightmare for what it is and it will stop; then you will wake up to reality. Understand your false beliefs and they will drop; then you will know the taste of happiness. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#27. You will seek for God in vain till you understand that God can't be seen as a "thing"; he needs a special way of looking similar to that of little children whose sight is undistorted by prefabricated doctrines and beliefs . - Author: Anthony De Mello

#28. When you fight something, you're tied to it forever. As long as you're fighting it, you're giving it power. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#29. The best things in life cannot be willed into being. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#30. Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#31. If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#32. So love the thought of death, love it. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#33. Nobody is afraid of the unknown, what you really fear is the loss of the known. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#34. 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. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#35. Isn't there such a thing as social liberation?" "Of course there is," said the Master. "How would you describe it?" "Liberation from the need to belong to the herd. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#36. A thought is a screen, not a mirror; that is why you live in a thought envelope, untouched by Reality. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#37. Love springs from awareness. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#38. If what you seek is Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else." "I know. An overwhelming passion for it." "No. An unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#39. Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is? - Author: Anthony De Mello

#40. The seeker says, "I do not know." That takes honesty. The master says, "I do not know." That takes a mystic's mind that knows things through non-knowing. The disciple says, "I know." That takes ignorance, in the form of borrowed knowledge. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#41. Extend
your arms
in welcome
to the future.
The best
is yet to come! - Author: Anthony De Mello

#42. When the eye is unobstructed, the result is sight. When the ear is unobstructed, the result is hearing. When the mind is unobstructed the result is truth. When the heart is unobstructed, the result is joy and love. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#43. What is love?"; "The total absence of fear," said the Master; "What is it we fear?"; "Love," said the Master. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#44. The greatest learning of the ages lies in accepting life exactly as it comes to us. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#45. 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

#46. Live your life as you see fit. That's not selfish. Selfish is to demand that others live their lives as you see fit. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#47. If you look carefully you will see that there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#48. May the peace of God disturb you always. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#49. Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#50. Wisdom can be learned . But it cannot be taught . - Author: Anthony De Mello

#51. You can will an act of service but you cannot will love. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#52. I have no fear of losing u, for you aren't an object of my property, or anyone else's. I love you as you are, without attachment, without fears, without conditions, without egoism, trying not to absorb you. I love you freely because I love your freedom, as well as mine. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#53. Another illusion is that external events have the power to hurt you, that other people have the power to hurt you. They don't. It's you who give this power to them. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#54. I leave you free to be yourself: to think your thoughts, indulge your tastes, follow your inclinations, behave in ways that you decide are to your liking. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#55. The Rose does not preen herself to catch my eye. She blooms because she blooms. A saint is a saint until he knows he is one. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#56. The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and his song - not one. Not two. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#57. A disciple asked, "Who is a Master?" The Master replied, "Anyone to whom it is given to let go of the ego. Such a person's life is then a masterpiece. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#58. This truth I firmly hold, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding;
my life has been a gift, a blessing to the world. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#59. Rare indeed, is the relationship in which the other is not cultivated for what one can get for oneself. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#60. Religion is the finger pointing to God. People are too busy licking the finger to notice where it's pointing. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#61. Name one practical, down-to-earth effect of spirituality," said the skeptic who was ready for an argument. "Here's one," said the Master. "When someone offends you, you can raise your spirits to heights where offenses cannot reach. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#62. Take the leap! You cannot cross a chasm in little jumps. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#63. Both what you run from-
and what you yearn for -
are within you. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#64. Can one be fully human without experiencing tragedy? The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#65. If what you said was true, where was the need to shout? - Author: Anthony De Mello

#66. As the Arabs say, The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#67. The law is an expression of God 's holy will and as such must be honored and loved," said the preacher piously. "Rubbish," said the Master. "The law is a necessary evil and as such must be cut down to the barest minimum. Show me a lover of the law and I will show you a muttonheaded tyrant . - Author: Anthony De Mello

#68. To fight evil with activity is like fighting darkness with one's hands. So what you need is light, not fit. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#69. Drop your false ideas. See through people. If you see through yourself, you will see through everyone. Then you will love them. Otherwise you spend the whole time grappling with your wrong notions of them, with your illusions that are constantly crashing against reality. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#70. The feigning sleeper can delude others he cannot delude himself. The false mystic, unfortunately, can delude both others and himself. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#71. Sin is a refusal to grow, a refusal to love, a refusal to get committed, to be concerned, and to take risks. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#72. Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#73. When God means you to be a healer he sends you patients; when he makes you a teacher he sends you pupils; when he destines you to be a Master he sends you stories . - Author: Anthony De Mello

#74. The only way that someone can be of help to you is by challenging your ideas. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#75. Perfect love casts out fear. Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#76. My experience is that it's precisely the ones who don't know what to do with this life who are all hot and bothered about what they are going to do with another life. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#77. To a woman who complained about her destiny the Master said, "It is you who make your destiny." "But surely I am not responsible for being born a woman?" "Being born a woman isn't destiny. That is fate. Destiny is how you accept your womanhood and what you make of it." - Author: Anthony De Mello

#78. People who want to rise above a well-cooked meal and a well-tailored garment, are out of their spiritual minds. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#79. Problems exist only in the human mind. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#80. Take away human beings from this planet and life would go on, nature would go on in all its loveliness and violence. Where would the problem be? No problem. You created the problem. You are the problem. You identified with "me" and that is the problem. The feeling is in you, not in reality. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#81. If you don't look at things through your concepts, you'll never be bored. Every single thing is unique. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#82. Before enlightenment, I used to be depressed; after enlightenment, I continue to be depressed. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#83. One year of life is worth more than twenty years of hibernation. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#84. There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#85. Problems only exist in the human mind. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#86. The butterfly in a caterpillar: the eagle in an egg; the saint in a selfish human being. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#87. Enlightenment is: absolute cooperation with the inevitable. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#88. Step by step, let whatever happens happen. Real change will come when it is brought about, not by your ego, but by reality. Awareness releases reality to change you. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#89. Certainty is the culprit. The spiritual person knows uncertainty - a state of mind unknown to the religious fanatic. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#90. If you never condemned you would never need to forgive. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#91. Nothing has changed but my attitude, therefore, everything has changed. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#92. I lack the Lord's own gentleness of heart, for I see deliberate malice where he sees ignorance and weakness. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#93. The important thing is not to know who "I" is or what "I" is. You'll never succeed. There are no words for it. The important thing is to drop the labels. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#94. If I haven't received any grace today, then I was not at home. This is because God is sending deliveries constantly. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#95. Has it ever occurred to you that you can only love when
you are alone? - Author: Anthony De Mello

#96. You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#97. One day, a philosopher asked, "What is the purpose of creation?" "Lovemaking," said the Master. Later, to his disciples, he said, "Before creation, love was. After creation, love was made. When love is consummated, creation will cease to be, and love will be forever." - Author: Anthony De Mello

#98. Most people don't live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts - generally somebody else's - mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#99. A nice definition of an awakened person: a person who no longer marches to the drums of society, a person who dances to the tune of the music that springs up from within. - Author: Anthony De Mello

#100. You sanctify whatever you are grateful for. - Author: Anthony De Mello