Anthony de Mello - One minute wisdom (1985)

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To a disciple who was forever complaining about others the Master said, "If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth."

Anthony de Mello
The Master would insist that the final barrier to our attaining God was the word and concept "God."

Anthony de Mello
You are so proud of your intelligence," said the master. "You are like a like a condemned man, proud of the vastness of his prison cell.

Anthony de Mello
Any time you are with anyone or think of anyone you must say to yourself: I am dying and this person too is dying, attempting the while to experience the truth of the words you are saying. If every one of you agrees to practise this, bitterness will die out, harmony will arise.

Anthony de Mello
When you come to see you are not as wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you are wiser today.

Anthony de Mello
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
A newly married couple said, "What shall we do to make our love endure?" Said the Master, "Love other things together"....

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

Anthony de Mello
To a visitor who described himself as a seeker after Truth the Master said, "If what you seek is Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else."
"I know. An overwhelming passion for it."
"No. An unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong."

Anthony de Mello
A zealous disciple expressed a desire to teach others the Truth and asked the Master what he thought about this. The Master said, "Wait."
Each year the disciple would return with the same request and each time the Master would give him the same reply: "Wait."
One day he said to the Master, "When will I be ready to teach?"
Said the Master, "When your excessive eagerness to teach has left you."

Anthony de Mello
People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change.

Anthony de Mello
A disciple was one day recalling how Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed were branded as rebels and heretics by their contemporaries.
Said the Master, Nobody can be said to have attained the pinnacle of Truth until a thousand sincere people have denounced him for blasphemy.

Anthony de Mello
To a visitor who asked to become his disciple the Master said, "You may live with me, but don't become my follower."
"Whom, then, shall I follow?"
"No one. The day you follow someone you cease to follow Truth."

Anthony de Mello
When I speak, you must not listen to the words, my dear. Listen to the Silence.

Anthony de Mello
Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description.

Anthony de Mello
"Help us to find God."
"No one can help you there."
"Why not?"
"For the same reason that no one can help the fish to find the ocean."

Anthony de Mello
The feigning sleeper can delude others — he cannot delude himself. The false mystic, unfortunately, can delude both others and himself.

Anthony de Mello
The Master would frequently assert that holiness was less a matter of what one did than of what one allowed to happen.

Anthony de Mello