Anthony De Mello Quotes

Problems only exist in the human mind.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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."

Wisdom can be learned. But it cannot be taught.

Love springs from awareness.

You keep insisting, I feel good because the world is right! Wrong! The world is right because I feel good. That's what all the mystics are saying.

Pleasant experiences make life delightful. Painful experiences lead to growth.

You sanctify whatever you are grateful for.

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

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.

Wisdom comes to those who learn nothing, unlearn everything.

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.

All is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well.

To fight evil with activity is like fighting darkness with one's hands. So what you need is light, not fit.

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

Problems exist only in the human mind.

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

People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change.

Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it.

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.

Nothing has changed but my attitude, therefore, everything has changed.

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

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

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

Nobody is afraid of the unknown, what you really fear is the loss of the known.

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

Rare indeed, is the relationship in which the other is not cultivated for what one can get for oneself.

When someone offends you, you can raise your spirits to heights where offenses cannot reach.

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

Most people don't live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts - generally somebody else's - mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions.

If you make me your authority, you harm yourself because you will not see things for yourself, and you harm me too because you refuse to see me as I am.

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

The feigning sleeper can delude others he cannot delude himself. The false mystic, unfortunately, can delude both others and himself.

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.

The master never seemed to have his fill of gazing at his firstborn child. "What do you want him to be when he grows up?" someone asked. "Outrageously happy," said the master.

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

Obedience keeps the rules. Love knows when to break them.

You are so proud of your intelligence," said the master. "You are like a like a condemned man, proud of the vastness of his prison cell.

The human mind makes foolish divisions in what love sees as one.

We're crazy, We're living on crazy ideas about love, about relationships, about happiness, about joy, about everything.