Anthony de Mello Quotes

A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.

The first step to loving someone else is to recognize the evil in ourselves, so we can forgive them.

To treat an imperfect brother (or sister) impatiently is to advertise our own imperfections.

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, 'I was wrong'.

It's good for everyone to understand that they are to love their enemies, simply because your enemies show you things about yourself you need to change. So in actuality enemies are friends in reverse.

We are here to love, not to judge. I'd been blaming and raging. I certainly wasn't loving my daughter that afternoon as God loves me. God's love doesn't insist on perfection or even good common sense. Why then should I demand more of those I love? With this tiny change in perspective I began to see the need for correction wasn't in my daughter, but in me.

We all have weaknesses. But I have figured that others have put up with mine so tolerably that I would be much less than fair not to make a reasonable discount for theirs.

Love must be learned again and again... Hate needs no instruction, but waits only to be provoked.

You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others - that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness.

For a person who cherishes compassion and love, the practice of tolerance is essential, and for that, and enemy is indispinsable. So we should be grateful to our enemies, for it is they who can best help us to develop a tranquil mind.

You many have noticed I have a temper ... but when I calmed down, I realized that this world, blighted and imperfect as it is, would be better with you in it.

For a practitioner of love and compassion, an enemy is one of the most important teachers. Without an enemy you cannot practice tolerance, and without tolerance you cannot build a sound basis of compassion.

Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.

Believe the best about people. Pray for their short comings. You are not the standard. We all need grace.

Keep up a humble sense of your own faults, and that will make you compassionate to others

If we were faultless, we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate. If we were to acknowledge honestly that we have not virtue enough to bear patiently with our neighbor's weaknesses, we should show our own imperfection, and this alarms our vanity.

Endeavor to be always patient of the faults and imperfections of others; for thou hast many faults and imperfections of thine own that require forbearance. If thou art not able to make thyself that which thou wishest, how canst thou expect to mold another in conformity to thy will?

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.

You can't expect everyone to love you. I'm not someone who just wants to throw out hate, just because.

The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others.

I'll tell you what I did need to learn was tolerance, and I think I've been actually given a daily opportunity to practice that, and it's - it's - and I know that that sounds almost like a backhanded slap, and it is in a way because I haven't been successful at it every day.

Lord, where we are wrong, make us willing to change; where we are right, make us easy to live with.

I don't think it's good to try and change anyone. The trick and the mystery - of relationships and life in general - is to learn to live with the bits you don't like.

When you love someone, you don't try to change them.

If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others.