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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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Anthony de Mello
Age: 55 †
Born: 1931
Born: September 4
Died: 1987
Died: June 2
Philosopher
Priest
Psychologist
Theologian
Writer
Bombay
Past
Eternal
Live
Child
Look
Happy
Looks
Future
Kingdom
Children
Perfect
Kingdoms
Mean
Moment
Images
Means
Bird
Moments
Flower

More quotes by Anthony de Mello

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Most people don't live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts - generally somebody else's - mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions.
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.
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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, said the Master.
Anthony de Mello
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Name one practical, down-to-earth effect of spirituality, said the skeptic who was ready for an argument. Here's one, said the Master. When someone offends you, you can raise your spirits to heights where offenses cannot reach.
Anthony de Mello
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The three most difficult things for a human being are not physical feats or intellectual achievements. They are, first, returning love for hate second, including the excluded third, admitting that you are wrong.
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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the tragedy of an attachment is that if its object is not attained it causes unhappiness. But if it is attained, it does not cause happiness – it merely causes a flash of pleasure followed by weariness, and it is always accompanied, of course, by the anxiety that you may lose the object of your attachment.
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Because you cannot see outside of you what you fail to see inside.
Anthony de Mello
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These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness and worship without awareness.
Anthony de Mello
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A thought is a screen, not a mirror that is why you live in a thought envelope, untouched by Reality.
Anthony de Mello
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You do not have to change for God to love you.
Anthony de Mello
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There is yet another illusion, that it is important to be respectable, to be loved and appreciated, to be important. Many say we have a natural urge to be loved and appreciated, to belong. That’s false. Drop this illusion and you will find happiness. We have a natural urge to be free, a natural urge to love, but not to be loved.
Anthony de Mello
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The way to really live is to die. The passport to living is to imagine yourself in your grave. Imagine you're lying in your coffin....Now look at your problems from that viewpoint. Changes everything, doesn't it?
Anthony de Mello
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Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?
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.
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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.
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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The words of the scholar are to be understood. The words of the master are not to be understood. They are to be listened to as one listens to the wind in the trees and the sound of the river and the song of the bird. They will awaken something within the heart that is beyond all knowledge.
Anthony de Mello
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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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Enlightenment is: absolute cooperation with the inevitable.
Anthony de Mello