Anthony de Mello Quotes
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One year of life is worth more than twenty years of hibernation.
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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.'
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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.
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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.'
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The Master would insist that the final barrier to our attaining God was the word and concept 'God.'
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The Master was allergic to ideologies. 'In a war of ideas,' he said, 'it is people who are the casualties.' Later he elaborated: 'People kill for money or for power. But the most ruthless murderers are those who kill for their ideas.'
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Wisdom can be learned. But it cannot be taught.
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Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description.
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You can will an act of service but you cannot will love.
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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.
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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?'
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Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it.
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'I wish to become a teacher of the Truth.' 'Are you prepared to be ridiculed, ignored and starving till you are forty-five?' 'I am. But tell me: What will happen after I am forty-five?' 'You will have grown accustomed to it.'
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'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.'
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There were rules in the monastery, but the Master always warned against the tyranny of the law. 'Obedience keeps the rules,' he would say. 'Love knows when to break them.'
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You will seek for God in vain till you understand that God can't be seen as a 'thing'; he needs a special way of looking - similar to that of little children whose sight is undistorted by prefabricated doctrines and beliefs.
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Said the self-righteous preacher, 'What, in your judgment, is the greatest sin in the world?' 'That of the person who sees other human beings as sinners,' said the Master.
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If you never condemned you would never need to forgive.
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The master enjoined not austerity, but moderation. If we truly enjoyed things, he claimed, we would be spontaneously moderate. Asked why he was so opposed to ascetical practices, he replied, 'Because they produce pleasure-haters who always become people-haters - rigid and cruel.'
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Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.
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'The law is an expression of God's holy will and as such must be honored and loved,' said the preacher piously. 'Rubbish,' said the Master. 'The law is a necessary evil and as such must be cut down to the barest minimum. Show me a lover of the law and I will show you a muttonheaded tyrant.'
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The best things in life cannot be willed into being.
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A master was once unmoved by the complaints of his disciples that, though they listened with pleasure to his parables and stories, they were also frustrated for they longed for something deeper. To all their objections he would simply reply: 'You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story.'
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To those who seek to protect their ego true Peace brings only disturbance.