Josef Pieper

The delight we take in our senses is an implicit desire to know the ultimate reason for things, the highest cause. The…

— Josef Pieper

“The vacancy left by absence of worship is filled by mere killing of time and by boredom, which is directly related to…

— Josef Pieper

“Patience is not the indiscriminate acceptance of any sort of evil: "It is not the one who does not flee from evil…

— Josef Pieper

Contemplation does not ignore the 'historical Gethsemane', does not ignore the mystery of evil, guilt and its bloody atonement. The happiness of…

— Josef Pieper

Justice is a habit (habitus), whereby a man renders to each one his due with constant and perpetual will.

— Josef Pieper

The happy life does not mean loving what we possess, but possessing what we love." Possession of the beloved, St. Thomas holds,…

— Josef Pieper

The brave man uses wrath for his own act, above all in attack, 'for it is peculiar to wrath to pounce upon…

— Josef Pieper

What distinguishes - in both senses of that word - contemplation is rather this: it is a knowing which is inspired by…

— Josef Pieper

Beauty, however, must here be understood in its original meaning: as the glow of the true and the good irradiating from every…

— Josef Pieper

Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for nonactivity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements,…

— Josef Pieper

To be conscious of gratitude is to acknowledge a gift.

— Josef Pieper

If God really became incarnate, and if His Incarnation can with justice compel man to change his life,then we have no alternative…

— Josef Pieper

Surrender to sensuality paralyzes the powers of the moral person.

— Josef Pieper

Only those are called liberal or free which are concerned with knowledge; those which are concerned with utilitarian ends... are called servile...The…

— Josef Pieper

To celebrate a festival means: to live out, for some special occasion and in an uncommon manner, the universal assent to the…

— Josef Pieper

“Since we nowadays think that all a man needs for acquisition of truth is to exert his brain more or less vigorously,…

— Josef Pieper

Being precedes Truth, and … Truth precedes the Good.

— Josef Pieper

“Here we must take account of one of St. Thomas's conceptual distinctions, which at first seems like unnecessary caviling. It is the…

— Josef Pieper

The common element in all the special forms of contemplation is the loving, yearning, affirming bent toward that happiness which is the…

— Josef Pieper

“It is possible to pray in such a way that one does not transcend the world, in such a way that the…

— Josef Pieper

The eye of perfected friendship with God is aware of deeper dimensions of reality, to which the eyes of the average man…

— Josef Pieper

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

— Josef Pieper

“Wonder acts upon a man like a shock, he is "moved" and "shaken", and in the dislocation that succeeds all that he…

— Josef Pieper

Modern religious teaching have little or nothing to say about the place of prudence in life or in the hierarchy of virtues.

— Josef Pieper

“Material things have closed boundaries; they are not accessible, cannot be penetrated, by things outside themselves. But one's existence as a spiritual…

— Josef Pieper