Anthony de Mello Quotes
-
'What is the secret of your serenity? Said the Master 'Wholehearted cooperation with the inevitable.'
-
When you come to see you are not as wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you are wiser today.
-
Those who make no mistakes are making the biggest mistakes of all - they are attempting nothing new.
-
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.'
-
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 made it his task to systematically destroy every doctrine, every belief, every concept of the divine, for these things, which were originally intended as pointers, were now taken as descriptions. He loved to quote the Eastern saying: 'When the sage points at the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger.'
-
When I speak, you must not listen to the words, my dear. Listen to the Silence.
-
No one is exempt from talking nonsense. The great misfortune is to do it solemnly.
-
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.
-
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.'
-
Look for competence not claims.
-
Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description.
-
To a visitor who described himself as a seeker after Truth the Master said, '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.'
-
The Master would frequently assert that holiness was less a matter of what one did than of what one allowed to happen.
-
Ideas kill people.
-
One always treads with a joyful step when one has dropped the burden called the ego.
-
You can will an act of service but you cannot will love.
-
Wisdom can be learned. But it cannot be taught.
-
My experience is that it's precisely the ones who don't know what to do with this life who are all hot and bothered about what they are going to do with another life. One sign that you're awakened is that you don't give a damn about what's going to happen in the next life. You're not bothered about it; you don't care. You are not interested, period.
-
A good teacher offers practice, a bad one offers theories.
-
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 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.'
-
The Master was exceedingly gracious to university dons who visited him, but he would never reply to their questions or be drawn into their theological speculations. To his disciples, who marveled at this, he said, 'Can one talk about the ocean to a frog in a well or about the divine to people who are restricted by their concepts?'