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 PieperRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True friendship with God offers a profound understanding of reality that most people do not perceive.
In this quote, Josef Pieper emphasizes the idea that genuine friendship with God allows individuals to gain insights and awareness into a deeper level of reality that is often inaccessible to those who lack such a relationship. This perspective encourages a spiritual connection that reveals truths and dimensions beyond ordinary human understanding.
Themes
FriendshipGodAwarenessRealitySpirituality
In practice
Example use cases
In a sermon about deepening our relationship with God, this quote can highlight the transformative power of spiritual friendship.
More from Josef Pieper
All quotes βBeing precedes Truth, and ... Truth precedes the Good.
Josef PieperRead
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 PieperRead
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 PieperRead
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 PieperRead
To celebrate a festival means: to live out, for some special occasion and in an uncommon manner, the universal assent to the world as a whole.
Josef PieperRead
Similar quotes
We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way. If you say that this is absurd, and that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such persons know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big.
William JamesRead
I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 - Jesus, did you?
Stephen KingRead
Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
W. H. AudenRead
Real friendship is shown in times of trouble; prosperity is full of friends.
EuripidesRead
One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.
H. L. MenckenRead
That's the problem with winning right from the start, thought Ender. you lose friends.
Orson Scott CardRead