No one can obtain felicity by pursuit. This explains why one of the elements of being happy is the feeling that a debt of gratitude is owed, a debt impossible to pay. Now, we do not owe gratitude to ourselves.… — Josef Pieper Copy Share Image
The delight we take in our senses is an implicit desire to know the ultimate reason for things, the highest cause. The desire for… — Josef Pieper Copy Share Image
“The vacancy left by absence of worship is filled by mere killing of time and by boredom, which is directly related to inability to enjoy leisure; for one can only be bored if the spiritual power to be leisurely has been lost. There is an entry in Baudelaire... "One must work, if not from taste then at least from despair.… — Josef Pieper Copy Share
“Patience is not the indiscriminate acceptance of any sort of evil: "It is not the one who does not flee from evil who is patient but rather the one who does not let himself thereby be drawn into disordered sadness." To be patient means not to allow the serenity and discernmet of one's soul to be taken away. Patience, then,… — Josef Pieper Copy Share
Contemplation does not ignore the 'historical Gethsemane', does not ignore the mystery of evil, guilt and its bloody atonement. The happiness of contemplation is… — Josef Pieper Copy Share Image
Justice is a habit (habitus), whereby a man renders to each one his due with constant and perpetual will. — Josef Pieper Copy Share Image
The happy life does not mean loving what we possess, but possessing what we love." Possession of the beloved, St. Thomas holds, takes place… — Josef Pieper Copy Share Image
The brave man uses wrath for his own act, above all in attack, 'for it is peculiar to wrath to pounce upon evil. Thus… — Josef Pieper Copy Share Image
What distinguishes - in both senses of that word - contemplation is rather this: it is a knowing which is inspired by love. "Without… — Josef Pieper Copy Share Image
Beauty, however, must here be understood in its original meaning: as the glow of the true and the good irradiating from every ordered state… — Josef Pieper Copy Share Image
Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for nonactivity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will… — Josef Pieper Copy Share Image
If God really became incarnate, and if His Incarnation can with justice compel man to change his life,then we have no alternative but to conceive of this Incarnation as something which is still present and which will remain present for all future time. ... What happens in the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist is something for which all religions of… — Josef Pieper Copy Share
