Quotes from Anthony de Mello

The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas. If you're ready to listen and if you're ready to be challenged, there's one thing that you can do, but no one can help you. What is this most important thing of all? It's called self-observation.

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

Do you think you help people because you are in love with them? Well, I've got news for you. You are never in love with anyone. You're only in love with your prejudiced and hopeful idea of that person. Take a minute to think about that: You are never in love with anyone, you're in love with your prejudiced idea of that person.

What is love?"; "The total absence of fear," said the Master; "What is it we fear?"; "Love," said the Master.

Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you're living in an illusion. There's something seriously wrong with you. You're not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? "He is to blame, she is to blame. She's got to change." No! The world's all right. The one who has to change is you.

A story is the shortest distance between a human being and truth.

You're never so centered on yourself as when you're depressed.

There was an exhausted woodcutter who kept wasting time and energy chopping wood with a blunt ax because he did not have the time, he said, to stop and sharpen the blade.

I leave you free to be yourself: to think your thoughts, indulge your tastes, follow your inclinations, behave in ways that you decide are to your liking.

There are two ways to wash dishes: One is to wash them in order to make them clean; the other is to wash them in order to wash them.

Do not speak unless you can improve on the silence.

People don't really want to grow up, people don't really want to change, people don't really want to be happy. As someone so wisely said to me, "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.

This truth I firmly hold, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding; my life has been a gift, a blessing to the world.

I lack the Lord's own gentleness of heart, for I see deliberate malice where he sees ignorance and weakness.

Put this program into action, a thousand times: (a) identify the negative feelings in you; (b) understand that they are in you, not in the world, not in external reality; (c) do not see them as an essential part of "I"; these things come and go; (d) understand that when you change, everything changes.

The trouble with your ideals is that if you live up to all of them, you become impossible to live with.

It isn't falling in that causes you to drown, it's staying in.

Certainty is the culprit. The spiritual person knows uncertainty—a state of mind unknown to the religious fanatic.

What makes you happy or unhappy is not the world and the people around you, but the thinking in your head. As well

Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality.

For to love persons is to have died to the need for persons and to be utterly alone.

If you love truth, be a lover of silence. Silence like the sunlight will illuminate you in God and will deliver you from the phantoms of ignorance.… In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then there is born something that draws us to silence.… If only you practice this, untold light will dawn on you in consequence … after a while a certain sweetness is born in the heart of this exercise and the body is drawn almost by force to remain in silence.

SERENITY "Are there ways for gauging one's spiritual strength?" "Many." "Give us one." "Find out how often you become disturbed in the course of a single day.

The root of evil is within you. As you begin to understand this, you stop making demands on yourself, you stop having expectations of yourself, you stop pushing yourself and you understand. Nourish yourself on wholesome food, good wholesome food. I'm not talking about actual food, I'm talking about sunsets, about nature, about a good movie, about a good book, about enjoyable work, about good company, and hopefully you will break your addictions to those other feelings.