David Steindl-Rast Quotes

60 quotes in 778 categories

• "...Grateful living makes life meaningful and full of joy."
• "...One can learn to focus on 'opportunity' as the gift within every given moment. This attitude towards life always improves the situation. Even in times…
• "The root of joy is gratefulness."
• Any place is sacred ground, for it can become a place of encounter with the divine Presence.
• 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…
• One single gift acknowledged in gratefulness has the power to dissolve the ties of our alienation.
• 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.…
• If you learn to respond as if it’s the first day in your life and the very last day, then you will have spent this…
• Day and night gifts keep pelting down on us. If we were aware of this, gratefulness would overwhelm us. But we go through life in…
• Joy is that kind of happiness that does not depend on what happens.
• By looking up, by raising our eyes above our limited horizon, we are more likely to perceive the blessings hidden in affliction.
• The antidote to exhaustion may not be rest. It may be wholeheartedness. You are so exhausted because all of the things you are doing are…
• 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…
• Beauty seen makes the one who sees it more beautiful.
• 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…
• Gratefulness has the courage to trust and so overcomes fear.
• 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…
• The goal is partly the enjoyment; it doesn't come later, but within the very process of the struggle.
• Gratefulness is the great task, the how of our spiritual work, because, rightly understood, it re-roots us.
• Home and journey together constitute the creative polarity of the heart, the two dimensions we must cultivate if we want to 'develop the heart.

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