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When the sage points at the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger.

Anthony de Mello

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Anthony de Mello
Age: 55 †
Born: 1931
Born: September 4
Died: 1987
Died: June 2
Philosopher
Priest
Psychologist
Theologian
Writer
Bombay
Sees
Fingers
Moon
Pointers
Sage
Finger
Points
Idiot

More quotes by Anthony de Mello

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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.
Anthony de Mello
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What is a loving heart? A loving heart is sensitive to the whole of life, to all persons a loving heart doesn't harden itself to any persons or things.
Anthony de Mello
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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.
Anthony de Mello
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You are never in love with anyone. You're only in love with your prejudiced and hopeful idea of that person.
Anthony de Mello
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It's only when you become love - in other words, when you have dropped your illusions and attachments - that you will know. As you identify less and less with the me, you will be more at ease with everybody and with everything.
Anthony de Mello
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Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality.
Anthony de Mello
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Perfect love casts out fear. Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.
Anthony de Mello
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If you want to know what it means to be happy, look at a flower, a bird, a child they are perfect images of the kingdom. For they live from moment to moment in the eternal now with no past and no future.
Anthony de Mello
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The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas.
Anthony de Mello
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Another illusion is that external events have the power to hurt you, that other people have the power to hurt you. They don't. It's you who give this power to them.
Anthony de Mello
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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.
Anthony de Mello
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There comes a point in your life when you become stark raving insane, commit suicide or become a mystic.
Anthony de Mello
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The world is right because I feel good. p. 83, Awareness, copyright 1990
Anthony de Mello
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If you look carefully you will see that there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy.
Anthony de Mello
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Has it ever occurred to you that you can only love when you are alone?
Anthony de Mello
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We live in a flash of light evening comes and it is night forever. It's only a flash and we waste it. We waste it with our anxiety, our worries, our concerns, our burdens.
Anthony de Mello
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You can will an act of service but you cannot will love.
Anthony de Mello
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Nothing has changed but my attitude, therefore, everything has changed.
Anthony de Mello
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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?
Anthony de Mello
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As the Japanese Zen masters say, “Don't seek the truth just drop your opinions”. Drop your theories don't seek the truth.
Anthony de Mello