Anthony De Mello Love Quotes & Sayings

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

We're crazy, We're living on crazy ideas about love, about relationships, about happiness, about joy, about everything. — Anthony De Mello

Do you think you help people because you are in love with them? Well, I've got news for you. You are never in love with anyone. You're only in love with your prejudiced and hopeful idea of that person. Take a minute to think about that: You are never in love with anyone, you're in love with your prejudiced idea of that person. — Anthony De Mello

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

What is love?"; "The total absence of fear," said the Master; "What is it we fear?"; "Love," said the Master. — Anthony De Mello

A man who took great pride in his lawn found himself with a large crop of dandelions. He tried every method he knew to get rid of them. Still they plagued him. Finally he wrote the department of agriculture. He enumerated all the things he had tried and closed his letter with the question: "What shall I do now?" In due course the reply came: "We suggest you learn to love them." — Anthony De Mello

Obedience keeps the rules. Love knows when to break them. — Anthony De Mello

Said a disciple, 'I don't trade my love for money.'
Said the Master, 'isn't itas bad - or worse - that you trade it for love? — Anthony De Mello

Understand the obstructions you are putting in the way of love, freedom, and happiness and they will drop. Turn on the light of awareness and the darkness will disappear. Happiness is not something you acquire; love is not something you produce; love is not something you have; love is something that has you. — Anthony De Mello

Because left to its own devices life would never produce love, it would only lead you to attraction, from attraction to pleasure, then to attachment, to satisfaction, which finally leads to wearisomeness and boredom. Then comes a plateau. Then once again the weary cycle: attraction, pleasure, attachment, fulfillment, satisfaction, boredom. All of this mixed with the anxieties, the jealousies, the possessiveness, the sorrow, the pain, that make the cycle a roller coaster. When you have gone repeatedly around and around the cycle, a time finally comes when you have had enough and want to call a halt to the whole process. And if you are lucky enough not to run into something or someone else that catches your eye, you will have at least attained a fragile peace. That is the most that life can give you; and you can mistakenly equate this state with freedom and you die without ever having known what it means to be really free and to love. — Anthony De Mello

One day, a philosopher asked, "What is the purpose of creation?" "Lovemaking," said the Master. Later, to his disciples, he said, "Before creation, love was. After creation, love was made. When love is consummated, creation will cease to be, and love will be forever." — Anthony De Mello

Love springs from awareness. — 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

Is it possible for the rose to say, "I will give my fragrance to the good people who smell me, but I will withhold it from the bad?" Or is it possible for the lamp to say, "I will give my light to the good people in this room, but I will withhold it from the evil people"? Or can a tree say, "I'll give my shade to the good people who rest under me, but I will withhold it from the bad"? These are images of what love is about. — Anthony De Mello

You must cultivate activities that you love. You must discover work that you do, not for its utility, but for itself, whether it succeeds or not, whether you are praised for it or not, whether you are loved and rewarded for it or not, whether people know about it and are grateful to you for it or not. How many activities can you count in your life that you engage in simply because they delight you and grip your soul? Find them out, cultivate them, for they are your passport to freedom and to love. — Anthony De Mello

If the heart is unobstructed, the result is love. — Anthony De Mello

Sin is a refusal to grow, a refusal to love, a refusal to get committed, to be concerned, and to take risks. — Anthony De Mello

Rare indeed, is the relationship in which the other is not cultivated for what one can get for oneself. — Anthony De Mello

You can will an act of service but you cannot will love. — Anthony De Mello

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

And increasingly - you know this and so do I we're losing the youth everywhere. They hate us; they are not interested in having more fears and guilt laid on them. They're not interested in more sermons and exhortations. But they are interested in learning about love. How can I be happy? How can I live? How can I taste the marvelous things that the mystics speak of? — Anthony De Mello

I was neurotic for years. I was anxious and depressed and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change. I resented them and I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but simply couldn't, no matter how hard I tried. Then one day someone said to me, Don't change. I love you just as you are. Those words were music to my ears: Don't change, Don't change. Don't change ... I love you as you are. I relaxed. I came alive. And suddenly I changed! — Anthony De Mello

You do not have to change for God to love you. — Anthony De Mello

The human mind makes foolish divisions in what love sees as one. — Anthony De Mello

So love the thought of death, love it. — Anthony De Mello

Say goodbye to golden yesterdays: or your heart will never learn to love the present. — Anthony De Mello

I have no fear of losing u, for you aren't an object of my property, or anyone else's. I love you as you are, without attachment, without fears, without conditions, without egoism, trying not to absorb you. I love you freely because I love your freedom, as well as mine. — Anthony De Mello

Drop your false ideas. See through people. If you see through yourself, you will see through everyone. Then you will love them. Otherwise you spend the whole time grappling with your wrong notions of them, with your illusions that are constantly crashing against reality. — Anthony De Mello

There were rules in the monastery, but the Master always warned against the tyranny of the law. 'Obedience keeps the rules,' he would say. 'Love knows when to break them.' — Anthony De Mello

Has it ever occurred to you that you can only love when
you are alone? — Anthony De Mello

One of my favorite definitions of enlightenment comes from a Jesuit priest named Anthony de Mello, who passed away some years ago. Someone asked him to define his experience of enlightenment. He said, "Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable." I love that, because it defines enlightenment not just as a realization, but as an activity. Enlightenment is when everything within us is in cooperation with the flow of life itself, with the inevitable. — Adyashanti

You are never in love with anyone. You're only in love with your prejudiced and hopeful idea of that person. — Anthony De Mello

When the eye is unobstructed, the result is sight. When the ear is unobstructed, the result is hearing. When the mind is unobstructed the result is truth. When the heart is unobstructed, the result is joy and love. — Anthony De Mello

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