Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
David Steindl-Rast
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: July 12
Monk
Non-Fiction Writer
Psychologist
Theologian
Vienna
Austria
Death
Two
Sufficiency
Become
Closely
Human
Destroy
Humans
Fully
Self
Connected
Must
Illusion
Love
Experience
More quotes by 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
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
In moments of surprise we catch at least a glimpse of the joy to which gratefulness opens the door.
David Steindl-Rast
As I express my gratitude, I become more deeply aware of it. And the greater my awareness, the greater my need to express it. What happens here is a spiraling ascent, a process of growth in ever expanding circles around a steady center.
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
What is necessary when we want to face reality? Stillness.
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
Love is saying yes to belonging.
David Steindl-Rast
Beauty seen makes the one who sees it more beautiful.
David Steindl-Rast
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
Gratefulness is the great task, the how of our spiritual work, because, rightly understood, it re-roots us.
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
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 has the courage to trust and so overcomes fear.
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
Joy is that kind of happiness that does not depend on what happens.
David Steindl-Rast
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
When you focus so much on the word, you tend to neglect the realm of silence.
David Steindl-Rast
The artist ought to know that a thousand painful deaths always lead into greater life.
David Steindl-Rast