Top 228 Quotes & Sayings by Anthony de Mello - Page 2

You do not have to change for God to love you.

There is yet another illusion, that it is important to be respectable, to be loved and appreciated, to be important. Many say we have a natural urge to be loved and appreciated, to belong. That’s false. Drop this illusion and you will find happiness. We have a natural urge to be free, a natural urge to love, but not to be loved.

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.

You are never in love with anyone. You're only in love with your prejudiced and hopeful idea of that person.

Say goodbye to golden yesterdays: or your heart will never learn to love the present.

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.

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.

What, concretely, is Enlightenment ?" "Seeing Reality as it is," said the Master. "Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?" "Oh, no! Most people see it as they think it is." "What's the difference?" "The difference between thinking you are drowning in a stormy sea and knowing you cannot drown because there isn't any water in sight for miles around.

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

People who deliberate fully before they take a step will spend their lives on one leg

No person on earth has the power to make you unhappy. There is no event on earth that has the power to disturb you or hurt you. No event, condition, situation, or person. Nobody told you this; they told you the opposite. That's why you're in the mess you're in right now. That is why you're asleep. They never told you this. But it's self-evident.

There comes a point in your life when you become stark raving insane, commit suicide or become a mystic.

There is another more subtle way in which the innocence of childhood is lost: when the child is infected with the desire to become somebody. Contemplate the crowds of people who are striving might and main to become, not what Nature intended them to be- musicians, cooks, mechanics, carpenters, gardeners, inventors- but "somebody": to become successful, famous, powerful; to become something that will bring not quiet and self-fulfillment, but self-glorification and self-expansion

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.

"I seek the meaning of existence," said the stranger. "You are of course assuming," said the Master, "that existence has a meaning." "Doesn't it?" "When you experience existence as it is - not as you think it is you will discover that your question has no meaning," said the Master.

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.

Behold God beholding you...and smiling.

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.

People kill for money or for power. But the most ruthless murderers are those who kill for their ideas.

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.

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

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.

Concepts are always frozen. Reality flows.

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

Wisdom can be learned. But it cannot be taught.

Understand the obstructions you are putting in the way of love, freedom, and happiness and they will drop. Turn on the light of awareness and the darkness will disappear. Happiness is not something you acquire; love is not something you produce; love is not something you have; love is something that has you.

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

All suffering comes from a person's inability to sit still and be alone.

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

When you get rid of your fear of failure, your tensions about succeeding... you can be yourself. Relaxed. You'll no longer be driving with your brakes on.

You've got to drop something. You've got to drop illusions. You don't have to add anything in order to be happy; you've got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings.

You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story.

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.

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.

If you never condemned you would never need to forgive.

Said the monk: "All these mountains and rivers and the earth and stars - where do they come from?" Said the master: "Where does your question come from?"

"What is the secret of your serenity?" Said the master: "Wholehearted cooperation with the inevitable."

The present moment is never intolerable. What's intolerable is what's going to happen in the next four hours. To have your body here at 8 pm and your mind at 10:30 pm, that's what causes us suffering.

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

What is a loving heart? A loving heart is sensitive to the whole of life, to all persons; a loving heart doesn't harden itself to any persons or things.

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

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."

"My former master taught me to accept birth and death." "Then what have you come to me for?" asked the master. "To learn to accept what lies in between."

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.

May the peace of God disturb you always.

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.

My life is like shattered glass." said the visitor. "My soul is tainted with evil. Is there any hope for me? "Yes," said the Master. "There is something whereby each broken thing is bound again and every stain made clean." "What?" "Forgiveness" "Whom do I forgive?" "Everyone: Life, God, your neighbor especially yourself." "How is that done?" "By understanding that no one is to blame," said the Master. "NO ONE.

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

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.

We live in a flash of light; evening comes and it is night forever. It's only a flash and we waste it. We waste it with our anxiety, our worries, our concerns, our burdens.

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

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.

Don't ask the world to change....you change first.

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

Whatever is truly alive must die. Look at the flowers; only plastic flowers never die.

Those who make no mistakes are making the biggest mistakes of all - they are attempting nothing new.

You know, all mystics - Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion - are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.

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.

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.

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 .