Anthony de Mello Quotes - Page 5

Love springs from awareness.

If you never condemned you would never need to forgive.

Wisdom comes to those who learn nothing, unlearn everything.

Ordinarily, everything we do is in our self-interest. Everything.

Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self.

Problems only exist in the human mind.

To a visitor who asked to become his disciple the Master said, "You may live with me, but don't become my follower." "Whom, then, shall I follow?" "No one. The day you follow someone you cease to follow Truth .

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.

The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas.

the greatest learning of the ages lies in accepting life exactly as it comes to us.

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.

Sin is a refusal to grow, a refusal to love, a refusal to get committed, to be concerned, and to take risks.

When you cling, life is destroyed; when you hold on to anything, you cease to live.

You're so ashamed of your past; drop it! You're so proud of your past; drop it!

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.

Negative feelings are in you, not in reality. Stop trying to change reality. That's crazy! Stop trying to change the other person. We spend all our time and energy trying to change external circumstances, trying to change our spouses, our bosses, our friends, our enemies, and everybody else. We don't have to change anything. Negative feelings are in you.

You have within yourself the answer to every question you propose - if you only knew how to look for it. In the Land of the spirit, you cannot walk by the light of someone else's lamp. You want to borrow mine. I'd rather teach you how to make your own.

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

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.

Concepts are always frozen. Reality flows.

Is there life before death? - that is the question!

The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas. If you're ready to listen and if you're ready to be challenged, there's one thing that you can do, but no one can help you. What is this most important thing of all? It's called self-observation.

One always treads with a joyful step when one has dropped the burden called the ego.

A prisoner lived in solitary confinement for years. He saw and spoke to no one and his meals were served through an opening in the wall. One day an ant came into his cell. The man contemplated it in fascination as it crawled around the room. He held it in the palm of his hand the better to observe it, gave it a grain or two, and kept it under his tin cup at night. One day it suddenly struck him that it had taken him ten long years of solitary confinement to open his eyes to the loveliness of an ant.

The poor think they will be happy when they become rich. The rich think they will be happy when they are rid of their ulcers.