John O'Donohue Quotes

and warm awareness, you are going to have an incredible life. You are going to have sufferings as well, but you will always return to that place of warmth and fire within yourself.

As Spring rain softens the Earth with surprise
May your Winter places be kissed by light.

As the ocean dreams to the joy of dance
May the grace of change bring you elegance.

As day anchors a tree in light and wind
May your outer life grow from peace within.

As twilight fills night with bright horizons
May Beauty await you at home beyond.

The longing at the heart of attraction is for union with the Beautiful.

There is the infinity of the microcosm: one little speck on the top of your thumb contains a whole inner cosmos, but it is so tiny that it is not visible to the human eye. The infinity in the microscopic is as dazzling as that of the cosmos. However, the infinity that haunts everyone and which no one can finally quell is the infinity of one’s own interiority

Good conversation is the enemy of falsity, facade, and shallowness. It chases the truth of things, it demolishes the flimsy foundation of facade and it penetrates the depths so as to soar into unfolding possibility.

There is incredible symmetry in a tree, between its inner life and its outer life,between its rooted memory and its external active presence. A tree grows up and down at once and produces enough branches too incarnate it’s wild divinity. It doesn’t limit itself- it reaches for the sky and it reaches for the source, all in one kind of seamless movement. So I think landscape is an incredible, mystical teacher, and when you begin to tune into its sacred presence, something shifts inside you.

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens, Transforming our broken fragments Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Is it not possible that a place could have huge affection for those who dwell there? Perhaps your place loves having you there. It misses you when you are away and in its secret way rejoices when you return. Could it be possible that a landscape might have a deep friendship with you? That it could sense your presence and feel the care you extend towards it? Perhaps your favourite place feels proud of you.

So take a breath and find what is unsolved in your heart.
Breathe in patience, breathe in love.
Love yourself bountiful.
And send that love out to others.
When you send love out from the bountifulness of your own love, it reaches other people.
This love is the deepest power of prayer.

May I have the courage today to live the life that I would love, to postpone my dream no longer but do at last what I cam here for and waste my heart on fear no more.

One of the great modern philosophers of beauty, Immanuel Kant, spoke of the joy we take in the Beautiful as 'disinterested delight'. The animation of the Beautiful is so immediate and fulfilling that we simply enjoy it for itself; it never occurs to us to ask what purpose it serves.

I love mountains. I feel that mountains are huge contemplatives. They are there and they are in the presence up to their necks and they are still in it and with it and within it. One of the lovely ways to pray is to take your body out into the landscape and to be still in it. Your body is made out of clay, so your body is actually a miniature landscape that has got up from the earth and now walking on the normal landscape.

The passionate heart never ages.

The soul is always wiser than the mind, even though we are dependent on the mind to read the soul for us.

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.