Best 199 quotes of Anthony De Mello on MyQuotes

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.

A disciple, in his reverence for the Master, looked upon him as God incarnate. "Tell me, O Master," he said, "why you have come into this world." "To teach fools like you to stop wasting their time worshiping Masters.

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.

A disciple was one day recalling how Buddha , Jesus , Mohammed were branded as rebels and heretics by their contemporaries. Said the Master, Nobody can be said to have attained the pinnacle of Truth until a thousand sincere people have denounced him for blasphemy .

A good teacher offers practice, a bad one offers theories.

A Jesuit once wrote a note to Father Arrupe, his superior general, asking him about the relative value of communism, socialism and capitalism. Father Arrupe gave him a lovely reply. He said, "A system is about as good or as bad as the people who use it." People with golden hearts would make capitalism or communism or socialism work beautifully.

All conflict comes from attachment.

All I did was sit on the riverbank handing out river water. After I'm gone, I trust you will notice the river.

All that you give to others you are giving to yourself.

A lost coin is found by means of a candle; the deepest truth is found by means of a simple story.

A man who took great pride in his lawn found himself with a large crop of dandelions. He tried every method he knew to get rid of them. Still they plagued him. Finally he wrote the department of agriculture. He enumerated all the things he had tried and closed his letter with the question: "What shall I do now?" In due course the reply came: "We suggest you learn to love them.

A master was once unmoved by the complaints of his disciples that, though they listened with pleasure to his parables and stories, they were also frustrated for they longed for something deeper. To all their objections he would simply reply: 'You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story.'

And increasingly - you know this and so do I we're losing the youth everywhere. They hate us; they are not interested in having more fears and guilt laid on them. They're not interested in more sermons and exhortations. But they are interested in learning about love. How can I be happy? How can I live? How can I taste the marvelous things that the mystics speak of?

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.

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.

Any time you are with anyone or think of anyone you must say to yourself: I am dying and this person too is dying, attempting the while to experience the truth of the words you are saying. If every one of you agrees to practice this, bitterness will die out, harmony will arise.

Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you're living in an illusion. There's something seriously wrong with you. You're not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? "He is to blame, she is to blame. She's got to change." No! The world's all right. The one who has to change is you.

A religious belief is not a statement about Reality, but a hint, a clue about something that is a mystery, beyond the grasp of human thought. In short, a religious belief is only a finger pointing to the moon. Some religious people never get beyond the study of the finger. Others are engaged in sucking it. Others yet use the finger to gouge their eyes out. These are the bigots whom religion has made blind. Rare indeed is the religionist who is sufficiently detached from the finger to see what it is indicating - these are those who, having gone beyond belief, are taken for blasphemers.

Are you your clothes? Are you your name? Are you your profession? Stop identifying with them. They come and go

As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life. But life has no meaning; it cannot have meaning because meaning is a formula; meaning is something that makes sense to the mind. Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made . Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning.

As soon as you look at the world through an ideology, you are finished. No reality fits ideology.

As the Arabs say, "The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens.

As the great Confucius said, "The one who would be in constant happiness must frequently change." Flow. But we keep looking back, don't we? We cling to things in the past and cling to things in the present...Do you want to enjoy a symphony? Don't hold on to a few bars of the music. Don't hold on to a couple of notes. Let them pass, let them flow. The whole enjoyment of a symphony lies in your readiness to allow the notes to pass.

As the Japanese Zen masters say, “Don't seek the truth; just drop your opinions”. Drop your theories; don't seek the truth.

As you identify less and less with the “me”, you will be more at ease with everybody and with everything. Do you know why? Because you are no longer afraid of being hurt or not liked. You no longer desire to impress anyone. Can you imagine the relief when you don't have to impress anybody anymore? Oh, what a relief. Happiness at last!

A thought is a screen, not a mirror; that is why you live in a thought envelope, untouched by Reality.

A writer arrived at the monastery to write a book about the Master. "People say you are a genius . Are you?" he asked. "You might say so." said the Master, none too modestly. "And what makes one a genius?" "The ability to recognize." "Recognize what?" "The butterfly in a caterpillar: the eagle in an egg; the saint in a selfish human being.

A zealous disciple expressed a desire to teach others the Truth and asked the Master what he thought about this. The Master said, "Wait." Each year the disciple would return with the same request and each time the Master would give him the same reply: "Wait." One day he said to the Master, "When will I be ready to teach?" Said the Master, "When your excessive eagerness to teach has left you.

Because everyone is the same distance from the sun. Does it really lessen the distance if you live on top of a skyscraper?

Because you cannot see outside of you what you fail to see inside.

Before enlightenment, I used to be depressed; after enlightenment, I continue to be depressed.

Both what you run from- and what you yearn for - are within you.

Can one be fully human without experiencing tragedy? The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that.

Can one talk about the ocean to a frog in a well or about the divine to people who are restricted by their concepts?

Charity is never so lovely as when one has lost consciousness that one is practicing charity. 'You mean I helped you? I was enjoying myself. I was just doing my dance. It helped you, that's wonderful. Congratulations to you. No credit to me.

Concepts are always frozen. Reality flows.

Do you want a sign that you're asleep? Here it is: you're suffering. Suffering is a sign that you're out of touch with the truth. Suffering is given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth, that you might understand that there's falsehood somewhere, just as physical pain is given to you so you will understand that there is disease or illness somewhere. Suffering occurs when you clash with reality. When your illusions clash with reality, when your falsehoods clash with truth, then you have suffering. Otherwise there is no suffering.

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.

Enlightenment is: absolute cooperation with the inevitable.

Everybody was talking about the religious man who committed suicide. While no one in the monastery approved of the man's action, some say they admired his faith. Faith?" said the Master. He had the courage of his convictions, didn't he?" That was fanaticism, not faith. Faith demands a greater courage still: to reexamine one's convictions and reject them if they do not fit the facts.

Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description.

Extend your arms in welcome to the future. The best is yet to come!

God in heaven holds each person by a string. When you sin, you cut the string. Then God ties it up again. Making a knot, bringing you a little closer to Him. Again and again your sins cut the string and with each knot God keeps drawing you closer and closer.

Happiness is not something you acquire; love is not something you produce; love is not something you have; love is something that has you.

Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture.

How sad if we pass through life and never see it with the eyes of a child.

If I haven't received any grace today, then I was not at home. This is because God is sending deliveries constantly.

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.

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.

If you don't look at things through your concepts, you'll never be bored. Every single thing is unique.