Quotes from Anthony de Mello

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.

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

"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 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.

Said the master: "Where does your question come from?"

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.

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

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

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

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.

It is a great mystery that though the human heart longs for Truth, in which alone it finds liberation and delight, the first reaction of human beings to Truth is one of hostility and fear!

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

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.

If you find me charming, it means that right now you're in a good mood, nothing more.

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.

Of what use is it to be tolerant of others if you are convinced that you are right and everyone who disagrees with you is wrong? That isn't tolerance but condescension.

We were brought up to need people. For what? For acceptance, approval, appreciation, applause - for what they call success. Those are words that do not correspond to reality. They are conventions, things that are invented, but we don't realize that they don't correspond to reality. What is success? It is what one group decided is a good thing. Another group will decide the same thing is bad.

Don't try to make them happy, you'll only get in trouble. Don't try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it irritates the pig.

Sinners often speak the truth. And saints have led people astray. Examine what is said, not the one who says it.

The world is right because I feel good. p. 83, Awareness, copyright 1990

If what you said was true, where was the need to shout?

Everybody was talking about the religious man who committed suicide. While no one in the monastery approved of the man's action, some say they admired his faith. Faith?" said the Master. He had the courage of his convictions, didn't he?" That was fanaticism, not faith. Faith demands a greater courage still: to reexamine one's convictions and reject them if they do not fit the facts.

The secret is to renounce nothing, cling to nothing, enjoy everything and allow it to pass, to flow.

To be properly wicked, you do not have to break the Law. Just observe it to the letter.