Anthony de Mello Quotes

The song that we hear with our ears is only the song that is sung in our hearts.

The heart is like an instrument whose strings Steal magic music from Life's mystic frets.

Then I played the song that hides in the center of me. That wordless music that moves through the secret places in my heart. I played it carefully, strumming it slow and low into the dark stillness of the night. I would like to say it is a happy song, that it is sweet and bright, but it is not.

My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.

In every artist there is poetry. In every human being there is the poetic element. We know, we feel, we believe.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.

What would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person.

You are only as powerful as that for which you stand. Do you stand for more money in the bank and a bigger house? Do you stand for an attractive mate? Do you stand for imposing your way of thinking upon others? These are the stands of the personality seeking to satisfy its wants. Do you stand for perfection, for the beauty and compassion of each soul? Do you stand for forgiveness and humbleness? These are the stands of the personality that has aligned itself with its soul. This is the position of a truly powerful Personality.

There is no complete spiritual life without music, for the human soul has regions which can be illuminated only by music.

We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.

To experience poetry is to see over and above reality. It is to discover that which is beyond the physical, to experience another life and another level of feeling. It is to wonder about the world, to understand the nature of people and, most importantly, to be shared with another, old or young, known or unknown.

Give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward may be one.

I just love to play characters that are layered and that I can relate to in some way, even if they're completely different than me; that I can see a glimpse of humanity and something I'm interested in exploring.

There is only one romance the Soul's.

You can’t change the music of your soul.

All people see fires, storms, explosions, or landscapes; but how many feel the flames, the lightnings, the whirlwinds, or the harmony? How many have an inner beauty that tinges their melancholy?

The soul is like a violin string: it makes music only when it is stretched.

For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower; Radiance and odour are not its dower; It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full, It desires what it has not, the beautiful.

No matter how beautiful the outside may be, the inside still has feelings and needs that just words don't fulfill.

In the presence of their love I sensed my lonliness, and I understood for a moment, clearly, that deep and basic human desire for companionship at depth.

I gotta do some sad scenes. Why, I never tried to make anybody cry in my life! And I go 'round all the time dolled up in kippie clothes-wear everything but a corset...can't stub my toe in this picture nor anything! Just imagine having to play-act all the time without ever getting hit with anything!

The purpose of relationship is not to have another who might complete you, but to have another with whom you might share your completeness.

Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.

There are faces so fluid with expression, so flushed and rippled by the play of thought, that we can hardly find what the mere features really are. When the delicious beauty of lineament loses its power, it is because a more delicious beauty has appeared, that an interior and durable form has been disclosed.