Josef Pieper Quotes

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Contemplation Intuition Reality

... 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

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Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for nonactivity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture and ourselves.

Josef Pieper

Art, Silence, Culture

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Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence.

Josef Pieper

Mean, Self, Trying

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Of course the world of work begins to become - threatens to become - our only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands of the working world grow ever more total, grasping ever more completely the whole of human existence.

Josef Pieper

World, Demand, Exclusion

Josef Pieper (1998). “Leisure, the Basis of Culture”, St Augustine PressInc

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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

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Only the silent hear and those who do not remain silent do not hear.

Josef Pieper

Faith, Inspiration, Christian Inspirational

Josef Pieper (2015). “Leisure: The Basis of Culture”, p.27, Ignatius Press

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If in this supreme test, in face of which the braggart falls silent and every heroic gesture is paralyzed, a man walks straight up to the cause of his fear and is not deterred from doing that which is good -- which ultimately means for the sake of God, and therefore not from ambition or from fear of being taken for a coward -- this man, and he alone, is truly brave.

Josef Pieper

Fall, Taken, Ambition

Josef Pieper (1966). “The four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance”, Univ of Notre Dame Pr

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Happiness,... even the smallest happiness, is like a step out of Time, and the greatest happiness is sharing in Eternity.

Josef Pieper

Steps, Eternity, Smallest

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Unchaste abandon and the self-surrender of the soul to the world of sensuality paralyzes the primordial powers of the moral person: the ability to perceive, in silence, the call of reality, and to make, in the retreat of this silence, the decision appropriate to the concrete situation of concrete action.

Josef Pieper

Moral, Surrender, Abstinence

"Fortitude: And Temperance".

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Wonder is defined by Thomas [Aquinas] in the Summa Theologiae [I-II, Q. 32, a. 8], as the desiderium sciendi, the desire for knowledge, active longing to know.

Josef Pieper

Desire, Wonder, Longing

"Leisure, the Basis of Culture" by Josef Pieper, translated by Gerald Malsbary, South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, (pp. 106-107), 1998.

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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

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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 mankind have exressed longing, dimly sensed was coming, and as a rule even prefigured- the physical presence of the divine Logos made man, and the presence of his sacrificial death, in the midst of the congregation celebrating the mysteries.

Josef Pieper

Men, Justice, Logos

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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

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

Josef Pieper

Religious, Teaching, Littles

Josef Pieper (1966). “The four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance”, Univ of Notre Dame Pr

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Material things have closed boundaries; they are not accessible, cannot be penetrated, by things outside themselves. But one's existence as a spiritual being involves being and remaining oneself and at the same time admitting and transforming into oneself the reality of the world. No other material thing can be present in the space occupied by a house, a tree, or a fountain pen. But where there is mind, the totality of things has room; it is "possible that in a single being the comprehensiveness of the whole universe may dwell.

Josef Pieper

Spiritual, Reality, Space

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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. To be conscious of gratitude is to acknowledge a gift.

Josef Pieper

Gratitude, Feelings, Elements

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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

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...Enduring comprises a strong activity of the soul, namely, a vigorous grasping of and clinging to the good; and only from this stout-hearted activity can the strength to support the physical and spiritual suffering of injury and death be nourished.

Josef Pieper

Spiritual, Strong, Support

Josef Pieper (1966). “The four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance”, Univ of Notre Dame Pr

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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

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Being precedes Truth, and ... Truth precedes the Good.

Josef Pieper

"The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance". Book by Josef Pieper, 1965.

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The eye of perfected friendship with God is aware of deeper dimensions of reality, to which the eyes of the average man and the average Christian are not yet opened.

Josef Pieper

Christian, Eye, Reality

Josef Pieper (1989). “An Anthology”, p.23, Ignatius Press

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To be conscious of gratitude is to acknowledge a gift.

Josef Pieper

Gratitude, Grateful, Conscious

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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

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The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which is set upon hard work appears to be this: man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refused to have anything as a gift.

Josef Pieper

Hard Work, Men, Toil

Josef Pieper (2015). “Leisure: The Basis of Culture”, p.22, Ignatius Press

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Only those are called liberal or free which are concerned with knowledge; those which are concerned with utilitarian ends... are called servile...The question is... can man develop to the full as a functionary and a worker and nothing else; can a full human existence be contained within an exclusively workaday existence? Stated differently and translated back into our terms: is there such a thing as a liberal art?

Josef Pieper

Art, Men, Ends

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Born: May 4, 1904
Died: November 6, 1997
Occupation: Philosopher
Cite this Page: Citation

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