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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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Anthony de Mello
Age: 55 †
Born: 1931
Born: September 4
Died: 1987
Died: June 2
Philosopher
Priest
Psychologist
Theologian
Writer
Bombay
Love
Hate
Third
Difficult
Thirds
Three
Achievement
Firsts
Including
Feats
Human
Physical
Excluded
Humans
Intellectual
Admitting
First
Second
Returning
Things
Wrong
Achievements

More quotes by Anthony de Mello

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Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep. They're born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.
Anthony de Mello
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People who deliberate fully before they take a step will spend their lives on one leg
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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That of the person who sees other human beings as sinners, said the Master.
Anthony de Mello
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A Jesuit once wrote a note to Father Arrupe, his superior general, asking him about the relative value of communism, socialism and capitalism. Father Arrupe gave him a lovely reply. He said, A system is about as good or as bad as the people who use it. People with golden hearts would make capitalism or communism or socialism work beautifully.
Anthony de Mello
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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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Before enlightenment, I used to be depressed after enlightenment, I continue to be depressed.
Anthony de Mello
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Both what you run from- and what you yearn for - are within you.
Anthony de Mello
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I'm going to write a book someday and the title will be I'm an Ass, You're an Ass. That's the most liberating, wonderful thing in the world, when you openly admit you're an ass. It's wonderful. When people tell me, You're wrong I say, What can you expect of an ass?
Anthony de Mello
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Don't ask the world to change....you change first.
Anthony de Mello
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One year of life is worth more than twenty years of hibernation.
Anthony de Mello
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Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?
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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When God means you to be a healer he sends you patients when he makes you a teacher he sends you pupils when he destines you to be a Master he sends you stories.
Anthony de Mello
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The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and his song — not one. Not two.
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.
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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When you come to see you are not as wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you are wiser today.
Anthony de Mello
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The present moment is never intolerable. What's intolerable is what's going to happen in the next four hours. To have your body here at 8 pm and your mind at 10:30 pm, that's what causes us suffering.
Anthony de Mello
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Think of a flabby person covered with layers of fat. That is what your mind can become - flabby, covered with layers of fat till it becomes too dull and lazy to think, to observe, to explore, to discover ... not wanting to be disturbed or questioned into wakefulness.
Anthony de Mello