{"author":"Josef Pieper","author_id":"Josef+Pieper","total_quotes":25,"quotes":[{"text":"... Each gratification points to the ultimate one, and that all happiness has some connection with eternal beatitude. Some connection, if only this: that every fulfillment this side of Heaven instantly reveals its inadequacy. It is immediately evident that such satisfactions are not enough; they are not what we have really sought; they cannot really satisfy us at all.","author":"Josef Pieper","tags":["happiness","satisfaction"],"id":2802,"author_id":"Josef+Pieper"},{"text":"The delight we take in our senses is an implicit desire to know the ultimate reason for things, the highest cause. The desire for wisdom that philosophy etymologically is is a desire for the highest or divine causes. Philosophy culminates in theology. All other knowledge contains the seeds of contemplation of the divine.","author":"Josef Pieper","tags":["philosophy","theology","wisdom"],"id":6645,"author_id":"Josef+Pieper"},{"text":"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.","author":"Josef Pieper","tags":["gratitude","happiness"],"id":40510,"author_id":"Josef+Pieper"},{"text":"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.","author":"Josef Pieper","tags":["gift","grace","labor","work","work-ethic"],"id":60059,"author_id":"Josef+Pieper"},{"text":"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.","author":"Josef Pieper","tags":["contemplation","intuition","love"],"id":63050,"author_id":"Josef+Pieper"},{"text":"The restoration of man’s inner eyes can hardly be expected in this day and age — unless, first of all, one were willing and determined simply to exclude from one’s realm of life all those inane and contrived but titillating illusions incessantly generated by the entertainment industry.","author":"Josef Pieper","tags":["entertainment","human-nature","humanity","inspirational","truth","wisdom"],"id":67722,"author_id":"Josef+Pieper"},{"text":"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.","author":"Josef Pieper","tags":["inner-life","mind","soul","spirituality"],"id":89372,"author_id":"Josef+Pieper"},{"text":"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.","author":"Josef Pieper","tags":["contemplation","happiness","harmony"],"id":101895,"author_id":"Josef+Pieper"},{"text":"A man who needs the unusual to make him 'wonder' shows that he has lost the capacity to find the true answer to the wonder of being. The itch for sensation, even though disguised in the mask of Boheme, is a sure indication of a bourgeois mind and a deadened sense of wonder.","author":"Josef Pieper","tags":["sensualism","wonder"],"id":164817,"author_id":"Josef+Pieper"},{"text":"Happiness,... Even the smallest happiness, is like a step out of Time, and the greatest happiness is sharing in Eternity.","author":"Josef Pieper","tags":["eternity","happiness"],"id":171194,"author_id":"Josef+Pieper"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":25,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}