Anthony de Mello Quotes

There's so much information on the internet. But people don't need more information, they need 'aha moments,' they need awareness, they need things that actually shift and change them.

The first element of change is awareness. You can’t change something unless you know it exists.

Awareness is always the first step.

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.

I think I surprise myself.

We are wiser than we know.

And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.

The more you understand yourself, the more you will understand the world.

We cannot change anything unless we accept it.

It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see them.

What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you.

We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.

You can’t change what you haven’t realized yet. Once you realize what you were asleep to, the change happens on its own.

Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed.

Once you see what you are doing or have been doing, you also see its futility, and that unconscious pattern then comes to an end by itself. Awareness is the greatest agent for change.

Listening and being curious and wide-eyed in the world, I think, is what allows us to move forward, progress, evolve and learn and alter our behavior and become more self-aware. I think that listening is kind of what it's all about.

A woman has many faces as she goes through her life. It's like we need more than one hair-do. We have many, many changes in the evolution of our lives. We have, we learn, and we grow; we view life differently, and life views us differently.

Change is the end result of all true learning.

It's funny, as you live through something you're not aware of it.

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass. Change may be announced by a small ache, so that you think you're catching cold. Or you may feel a faint disgust for something you loved yesterday. It may even take the form of a hunger that peanuts won't satisfy. Isn't overeating said to be one of the strongest symptoms of discontent. And isn't discontent the lever of change?

A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know.

I discovered myself!

The stories are not autobiographical, but they're personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I've learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.