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Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy -- because we will always want to have something else or something more.

David Steindl-Rast

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David Steindl-Rast
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: July 12
Monk
Non-Fiction Writer
Psychologist
Theologian
Vienna
Austria
Hands
Insightful
Matter
Gratitude
Much
Grateful
Something
Keys
Always
Hold
Love
Happiness
Life
Happy
Else
Gratefulness

More quotes by David Steindl-Rast

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Each string of a wind harp responds with a different note to the same breeze. What activity makes you personally resonate most strongly, most deeply?
David Steindl-Rast
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Impatience makes us get ahead of ourselves, reaching out for something in the future and not really being content with where we are, here and now.
David Steindl-Rast
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In moments of surprise we catch at least a glimpse of the joy to which gratefulness opens the door.
David Steindl-Rast
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Grateful living makes life meaningful and full of joy.
David Steindl-Rast
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As we learn to give thanks for all of life and death, for all of this given world of ours, we find a deep joy. It is the joy of trust, the joy of faith in the faithfulness at the heart of all things. It is the joy of gratefulness in touch with the fullness of life.
David Steindl-Rast
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Look closely and you will find that people are happy because they are grateful. The opposite of gratefulness is just taking everything for granted.
David Steindl-Rast
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When you focus so much on the word, you tend to neglect the realm of silence.
David Steindl-Rast
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Gratefulness is that fullness of life for which we are all thirsting.
David Steindl-Rast
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Beauty seen makes the one who sees it more beautiful.
David Steindl-Rast
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Faith is the courageous confidence that trusts in the Source of all gifts.
David Steindl-Rast
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People who have faith in life are like swimmers who entrust themselves to a rushing river. They neither abandon themselves to its current nor try to resist it. Rather, they adjust their every movement to the watercourse, use it with purpose and skill, and enjoy the adventure.
David Steindl-Rast
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The universe is gratis. It cannot be earned, nor need it be earned.
David Steindl-Rast
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We have thousands of opportunities every day to be grateful: for having good weather, to have slept well last night, to be able to get up, to be healthy, to have enough to eat. ... There's opportunity upon opportunity to be grateful that's what life is.
David Steindl-Rast
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The challenge is to learn to respond immediately to whatever it is time for. Not to wonder whether you have time for it or whether you like it, but simply to respond when it is time.
David Steindl-Rast
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There's opportunity upon opportunity to be grateful that's what life is.
David Steindl-Rast
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Gratefulness is the great task, the how of our spiritual work, because, rightly understood, it re-roots us.
David Steindl-Rast
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The experience of love and the experience of death destroy the illusion of our self-sufficiency. The two are closely connected, and to become fully human we must experience both of them.
David Steindl-Rast
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If there is anything the artist or a true work of art teaches us, it is that variety and complexity really increase the unity, and that to achieve unity within a great variety of complexity is a greater achievement and more satisfying piece of art than to achieve unity with just a few elements, which is relatively easily achieved.
David Steindl-Rast
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We can't really waste our time we have to see that we are all in the same boat and that different religious traditions point in the same direction, and now let's get moving together, doing something for peace.
David Steindl-Rast
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Any change in attitude changes the way one sees the world, and this in turn changes the way one acts.
David Steindl-Rast