Why don’t I see goodness and beauty everywhere? Because you cannot see outside of you what you fail to see inside.
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Fail, Good, Beauty
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.
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Dance, Music
Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality.
—Anthony de Mello
Get rid of your fear of failure, your tensions about succeeding, you will be yourself. Relaxed. You wouldn’t be driving with your brakes on. That’s what would happen.
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Fail, Failure, Fear
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.
—Anthony de Mello
I was neurotic for years. I was anxious and depressed and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change. I resented them and I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but simply couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried. Then one day someone said to me, Don’t change. I love you just as you are. Those words were music to my ears: Don’t change, Don’t change. Don’t change … I love you as you are. I relaxed. I came alive. And suddenly I changed!
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Change
Don’t say, “I am depressed”. If you want to say, “It is depressed,” that’s all right. If you want to say that depression is there, that’s fine; if you want to say gloominess is there, that’s fine. But not: I am gloomy. You’re defining yourself in terms of the feeling. That’s your illusion; that’s your mistake. There is a depression there right now, but let it be, leave it alone. It will pass. Everything passes, everything. Your depressions and your thrills have nothing to do with happiness. Those are swings of the pendulum. If you seek kicks or thrills, get ready for depression. Do you want your drug? Get ready for the hangover. One end of the pendulum swings over to the other.
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Win, Happiness, Depression, Mistake
Does one really have to fret about enlightenment? No matter which way I turn, I’m homeward bound.
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Worry
Life is for the gambler, it really is.
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Life
To a disciple who was forever complaining about others the Master said, “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.”
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Peace
So love the thought of death, love it.
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Death, Love
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.
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Truth, Communication, Suffering, Sleep, Tolerance, Wise, Give, Pain
Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.
—Anthony de Mello
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.
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Happy, Love, Perfect, Fear, Happiness, Joy, Feelings
Charity is really self-interest masquerading under the form of altruism.
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Charity
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…
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Music, Lies, Joy, Happiness, Great, Past, Change
The way to really live is to die. The passport to living is to imagine yourself in your grave. Imagine you’re lying in your coffin….Now look at your problems from that viewpoint. Changes everything, doesn’t it?
—Anthony de Mello
People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it.
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Thinking
When you cling, life is destroyed; when you hold on to anything, you cease to live.
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Life, Live
You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story.
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Storytelling
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.
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Unhappiness
You’re not living until it doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn to you whether you live or die. At that point you live. When you’re ready to lose your life, you live it.
—Anthony de Mello
Topics: Live, Life
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Deepak Chopra Indian-born American Physician
- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Indian-born American Novelist
- Johann Jacob Zimmermann German Nonconformist Theologian
- Tryon Edwards American Theologian
- Reinhold Niebuhr American Theologian
- Paul Tillich German-American Theologian
- Archibald Alexander Hodge American Presbyterian Theologian
- Samuel Rutherford Scottish Presbyterian Theologian
- George Matheson Scottish Theologian
- Conyers Middleton English Clergyman
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