Josef Pieper Quotes About Contemplation

Quotes about: Contemplation

• ... the greatest menace to our capacity for contemplation is the incessant fabrication of tawdry empty stimuli which kill the receptivity of the soul.

  Josef Pieper

  Philosophy, Thinking, Soul

• Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness. If we have not escaped from harried rush, from mad pursuit, from unrest, from the necessity of care, we are not happy. And what of contemplation? Its very premise is freedom from the fetters of workaday busyness. Moreover, it itself actualizes this freedom by virtue of being intuition.

  Josef Pieper

  Mad, Intuition, Unrest

• The delight we take in our senses is an implicit desire to know the ultimate reason for things, the highest cause. The desire for wisdom that philosophy etymologically is is a desire for the highest or divine causes. Philosophy culminates in theology. All other knowledge contains the seeds of contemplation of the divine.

  Josef Pieper

  Philosophy, Desire, Causes

• What distinguishes - in both senses of that word - contemplation is rather this: it is a knowing which is inspired by love. "Without love there would be no contemplation." Contemplation is a loving attainment of awareness. It is intuition of the beloved object.

  Josef Pieper

  Knowing, Intuition, Would Be

• Contemplation does not ignore the 'historical Gethsemane', does not ignore the mystery of evil, guilt and its bloody atonement. The happiness of contemplation is a true happiness, indeed the supreme happiness; but it is founded upon sorrow.

  Josef Pieper

  Evil, Historical, Sorrow

• The happy life does not mean loving what we possess, but possessing what we love." Possession of the beloved, St. Thomas holds, takes place in an act of cognition, in seeing, in intuition, in contemplation.

  Josef Pieper

  Mean, Happy Life, Intuition

• The happy man needs nothing and no one. Not that he holds himself aloof, for indeed he is in harmony with everything and everyone; everything is "in him"; nothing can happen to him. The same may also be said for the contemplative person; he needs himself alone; he lacks nothing.

  Josef Pieper

  Men, May, Needs

• The ultimate meaning of the active life is to make possible the happiness of contemplation.

  Josef Pieper

  Life Is, Contemplation, Active

  Josef Pieper (1989). “An Anthology”, p.42, Ignatius Press

• The common element in all the special forms of contemplation is the loving, yearning, affirming bent toward that happiness which is the same as God Himself, and which is the aim and purpose of all that happens in the world.

  Josef Pieper

  Special, Purpose, Elements

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