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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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David Steindl-Rast
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: July 12
Monk
Non-Fiction Writer
Psychologist
Theologian
Vienna
Austria
Human
Destroy
Humans
Fully
Connected
Self
Illusion
Must
Experience
Love
Death
Two
Sufficiency
Become
Closely
More quotes by David Steindl-Rast
A lifetime may not be long enough to attune ourselves fully to the harmony of the universe. But just to become aware that we can resonate with it -- that alone can be like waking up from a dream.
David Steindl-Rast
If you're really mind-full, and if you underline that aspect of fullness, wholeness, or wholeheartedness, it reveals the gift character of everything.
David Steindl-Rast
The artist ought to know that a thousand painful deaths always lead into greater life.
David Steindl-Rast
There's opportunity upon opportunity to be grateful that's what life is.
David Steindl-Rast
A single crocus blossom ought to be enough to convince our heart that springtime, no matter how predictable, is somehow a gift, gratuitous, gratis, a grace.
David Steindl-Rast
One single gift acknowledged in gratefulness has the power to dissolve the ties of our alienation.
David Steindl-Rast
Solitude without togetherness deteriorates into loneliness. One needs strong roots in togetherness to be solitary rather than lonely when one is alone.
David Steindl-Rast
The root of joy is gratefulness...It is not joy that makes us grateful it is gratitude that makes us joyful.
David Steindl-Rast
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
The universe is gratis. It cannot be earned, nor need it be earned.
David Steindl-Rast
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
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
Joy is that kind of happiness that does not depend on what happens.
David Steindl-Rast
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
Gratefulness has the courage to trust and so overcomes fear.
David Steindl-Rast
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
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
In moments of surprise we catch at least a glimpse of the joy to which gratefulness opens the door.
David Steindl-Rast
Gratefulness is that fullness of life for which we are all thirsting.
David Steindl-Rast
There is no one harder to live with than an artist. Therefore an artist is a real gift because he or she raises the sanctity of everyone else in the community.
David Steindl-Rast