70 famous phrases by Anthony de Mello

Anthony De Mello (1931-1987) was a Jesuit priest and psychotherapist internationally known for his books and lectures.

In his lectures he used theological elements from other religions in addition to the well-known Judeo-Christian tradition. After a review of his texts, his ideas were considered unorthodox to the doctrine of the faith.

• Related article: "40 religious phrases to understand this way of thinking"

The best phrases and thoughts of Anthony de Mello

Many of this thinker's ideas can help us in many aspects of life and his ideas can serve as great inspiration on countless occasions.

Perhaps some of you do not know this great thinker and for that very reason We have decided to bring you a selection of Anthony de Mello's famous quotes What else can help you spiritually?

1. Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to the awareness of one's own ignorance.

Acknowledging our own ignorance is the first step towards wisdom.

2. Living freely, owning oneself, is not letting yourself be carried away by any person or situation.

We must be consistent with our own thoughts and we must not get carried away by anything or anyone.

3. The great tragedy of life is not how much we suffer, but how much we lose. Human beings are born sleeping, live sleeping and die sleeping.

We lose a lot of time sleeping but it is something that we cannot stop doing because it is essential for our body, so we must make the most of the hours we spend awake.

4. The perfect love is molded out of fear. Where there is love, there are no demands, there are no expectations, there is no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my unhappiness does not reside in you. If you left me, I wouldn't feel sorry for myself; I greatly enjoy your company, but I don't cling to it.

This way of thinking about love is widely shared today by a large part of society.

5. He who wants to be constant in happiness must change frequently.

Evolve spiritually, that is the path we must follow to achieve our own happiness.

6. Thought is a screen, not a mirror: that's why you live in an envelope of thought, outside of reality.

Thinking is a wonderful thing but we should not live absorbed in our thoughts.

7. I am not afraid of losing you, because you are not an object of my property or someone else's. I love you as you are; without attachment, without fear, without conditions, without selfishness, without trying to absorb you. I love you freely because I love your freedom, just like mine.

This is the correct way how we all should love someone, our loved one is not property.

8. Don't ask the world to change, change yourself first.

In order to change the world we must first change ourselves, when the beings that inhabit a society evolve, society does so by force with them.

9. If what you said was true, where was the need to scream?

Raising your voice does not agree with you, the truth is defended with good arguments.

10. People mistakenly assume that their thoughts are created by their heads; in fact they are formed by your heart, which first dictates the conclusion, then the head provides the reasoning that will defend it.

The emotions They are the ones who to a large extent create our opinion, once we create an opinion we look for the arguments to defend it.

11. The greatest learning of age lies in accepting life exactly as it comes to us.

Knowing how to settle for what we have is something that many of us learn over the years.

12. Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it.

Thoughts can create our ideal world, but to make it happen we must act.

13. Don't talk until you can improve the silence.

A great quote that encourages us to think before we speak, something we all should do and many people don't.

14. I would like to become a teacher of the truth.

In this quote Anthony de Mello tells us about his interest in actively practicing teaching.

15. Anytime you are with someone or thinking about someone, you must tell yourself: I am dying and this person is also dying, trying to experience the truth of the words that you say. If everyone agrees to practice this, bitterness will be extinguished, harmony will arise.

We must be more empathetic with those around us and our loved ones.

16. If you have problems, you are asleep. Life is not problematic. It is the self (the human mind) that creates the problems.

Many times we ourselves are the ones who worry about issues that really shouldn't worry us.

17. There is not a single moment in your life in which you do not have what you need to be happy. The reason you are unhappy is because you keep thinking about what you don't have, instead of thinking about what you do have right now.

We must seek our happiness in the smallest things in life, the small pleasures.

18. If you observe how you are made and how you function, you will discover that there is a program in your mind, a whole series of assumptions about how the world should be, how you should be yourself and what you should want.

Spiritual growth can break down our sociocultural barriers and let us see that life can be very different.

19. You are responsible for your anger, because even if the other has caused the conflict, attachment and not the conflict is what makes you suffer.

We should not get angry about things that have no solution, and if they do, why get angry?

20. When you are too far from nature, your spirit dries up and dies, because it has been violently separated from its roots.

Nature can help us clarify our ideas and allow us to think in a more relaxed way.

21. You must discover what it is that you do, not because of the utility it brings you, but because you want to do it.

We must dedicate our lives to that work that gives us the most emotionally.

22. Approval, success, praise, valuation, are the drugs with which society has made us drug addicts, and by not always having them, the suffering is terrible.

Many of us are authentic addicts to the approval of others, our personal happiness does not depend on them.

23. If your prayer stays too long in the head and does not move to the heart, it will become dry, tedious and discouraging.

In order to pray correctly we must do it from the bottom of our hearts.

24. There is only one need: that need is to love. When someone discovers that, it is transformed.

Love can turn our life into something wonderful, let's let it into our life.

25. All the brilliance of the sunrise seen from the mountain, is contained in an exercise as monotonous as it is to take into account the sensations of your body for hours and days without end.

Knowing our body is essential for its full use, we must be in contact with it.

26. Only in freedom do you love. When you love life, reality, with all your might, you love people much more freely.

If you truly love a person, we must understand that that person needs their personal space and freedom.

27. It is fear that makes us want to grasp happiness with our hands, and it does not allow itself to be grasped. She is. We only discover this by observing, wide awake, seeing when our fears move us and when our motivations are real. If we cling to desires, it is a sign that there is attachment.

Fears and worries can take happiness away from us, we must learn to live without fear.

28. Fear of the future or hope in the future is the same, they are projections of the past. Without projection there is no future, because what does not enter into reality does not exist.

Our future will be as we project it, our previous decisions will lead us towards it.

29. Look within yourself, understand that there is a generous kingdom of self-sufficient happiness. You had not found it within yourself before, because your attention was focused on the things you believe in, or on your illusions about the world.

We can create our own happiness, it does not reside in another person or in something material, we must create it ourselves.

30. Experience reality, go to your senses. That will bring you to the now. That will bring you into the experience. It is in the now where God is found.

We must live in the moment and make the most of it, in this way we will live much more fully.

31. Selfishness is demanding that the other do what you want. Letting each one do what he wants is love. In love there can be no demands or blackmail.

Our loved ones must decide if they want to be by our side or not, we should not try to impose our own desires on them.

32. The bad thing is that most equate happiness with getting the object of their attachment, and they don't want to know that the Happiness is precisely in the absence of attachments, and in not being subjected to the power of any person or stuff.

A great quote that we all should know about, happiness lies within ourselves.

33. You must learn to leave the field of thought and locution and emigrate to the domains of feelings, sensations, love and intuition.

Getting in direct contact with our emotions and feelings can reveal many things about ourselves.

34. To receive the revelation of the scripture you have to approach it; To grasp the revelation of silence, you must first achieve silence.

The objectives are achieved by fighting for them, if we do not fight to achieve them we will never be able to have what it takes to achieve them.

35. The most important question in the world, the basis of every mature act, is: who am I? Because, without knowing yourself, you cannot even know God. Knowing yourself is essential.

Knowing ourselves is essential, who we are and what we want to achieve in life.

36. The establishment of relationships is only possible between conscious people. Unconscious people cannot share love.

In order to share our love, we must first understand what love is.

37. Fear is only removed by looking for the origin of fear. The one who behaves well based on fear is that he has tamed him, but he has not changed the origin of his problems: he is asleep.

To live a life without fear we have to have some basic notions about society and its principles.

38. All you have to do is open your eyes and see that, in fact, you don't need what you are so attached to at all.

We should not be attached to anything or anyone, we are totally self-sufficient.

39. You are happy here and now; but you don't know it, because your false beliefs and your distorted way of perceiving things have filled you with fears, worries, ties, conflicts, guilt and a series of games that you have played programming.

We could be happy at this precise moment, but we are boycotting ourselves.

40. Most people have been so brainwashed that they don't even realize how unhappy they are: like the man who dreams and has no idea what he is dreaming about.

We can have all the riches in the world and be surrounded by friends, but still be deeply unhappy.

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

He who has nothing to hide will always tell us the truth.

42. When you get rid of your fear of failing, of your tensions of succeeding, you can be yourself.

Fear blocks us and does not allow us to continue moving forward in life.

43. To be awake is to accept everything, not as a law, not as a sacrifice, nor as an effort, but for enlightenment.

We must be fully aware of the moment in which we find ourselves and how we must act.

44. It's not falling that makes you sink, it's staying there.

Perseverance is the greatest effort that as people we can make.

45. The day you change, all the people will change for you, and your present will change. Then you will live in a world of love.

To change our environment we must first change ourselves.

46. When you are guilty, you do not hate your sins, but yourself.

Guilt is an evil that only affects us when we inflict it on ourselves.

47. You have to understand that the shortest distance between the truth and a human being is a story.

History allows us to see what the human being is like and how he has acted in the various situations in which he has found himself.

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

Our current mood reveals the world seen from that precise prism, if we are in a bad mood the world will look much blacker.

49. There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs that you have in your head, beliefs so widespread that it does not occur to you to question.

Society tells us how we should live life in order to be happy but that is just a deception, we will be happy when we allow ourselves to be.

50. These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without recklessness, and worship without conscience.

Many evils affect humanity from many different sides, the truly important thing is to stay true to ourselves.

51. Enlightenment is: absolute cooperation with the inevitable.

What has to happen will happen, living in fear only deprives us of our happiness.

52. When you see that you are not as wise today as you thought yesterday, you are wiser today.

Accepting our ignorance is a fundamental step to achieve wisdom.

53. People who want a cure, as long as it's painless, are like those who want progress, as long as it's without change.

Sometimes the most positive things carry a certain pain within their own application, like alcohol that disinfects but also stings.

54. There are two ways to wash dishes: one is to wash to clean, the other is to wash to wash.

We must do things when necessary, or on the contrary, we should not waste time doing what is not necessary.

55. Happiness cannot depend on events. It is your reaction to events that makes you suffer.

Being happy or not depends on us, whether or not we want to be happy at that moment.

56. You see people and things not as they are, but as you are.

We tend to think that people are the way we think, not the way they really are.

57. Do not put your happiness in me because I can die or disappoint you.

As this quote tells us very well, we should not put our happiness in a third party, our happiness depends only on ourselves.

58. Put your happiness in life and you will realize that when you are free, that is when you are capable of loving.

In order to love completely, we must first be completely happy.

59. To love people you have to let go of the need for them and their approval. Your acceptance is enough.

Accepting that person as they are, that is the first step towards being able to love them honestly.

60. Society and your culture have covered the mind with such layers, the experts: the political, cultural and religious leaders think for you.

We must abandon ideas that have tried to impose on us, we must think for ourselves: what we want, what we want and what we want to achieve in life.

61. Happiness is our natural state.

Something that we should keep in mind every day of our lives.

62. Have you noticed that in nature there are no borders? That being "American" is only in your head?

His precepts encouraged people to think about what really exists in life and what doesn't.

63. Love is not attraction.

The categorization of love was always one of the most common topics in his conferences.

64. Do you know where love comes from? Love comes from you, not from me.

De Mello offered the world a revolutionary thought about love.

65. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture.

We must learn to be more like children.

66. We are reacting to ideas in our head, we live on ideas. We feed on that, on words.

According to de Mello, true happiness is achieved by living in what is real, what exists.

67. Don't tie yourself up.

Only then will we be happy.

68. Depend on another for your happiness, that is the mistake.

An appointment that is still fully valid today.

69. People feel empty inside and rush to fill that void with someone. That's not love.

To be happy, we can only fill that void ourselves.

70. What is love? The total absence of fear.

Many philosophies and religious traditions consider fear the opposite of love and vice versa.