67 Quotes by David Steindl-Rast

Now think of a situation in which something becomes meaningful to you. What is there to grasp? What is there to keep under control? That is not the idea. You will find yourself using expressions in which you are perfectly passive or at least more passive. “Responsive” is really the word, but you are more passive than in a situation in which you are accomplishing a purpose. You will say, “This really did something to me.

From experience we know that whenever we are truly awake and alive, we are also truly grateful.

Gratitude is here presented as more than a feeling, a virtue, or an experience; gratitude emerges as an attitude we can freely choose in order to create a better life for ourselves and for others. The Nigerian Hausa put it this way: Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot.

Order is the disposition of things in which each gives to the other its room, its own proper place. That’s the external aspect. The other is that order that springs from love: there’s no other way of establishing order except through love.

Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy – because we will always want to have something else or something more.

What is necessary when we want to face reality? Stillness.

When you focus so much on the word, you tend to neglect the realm of silence.

Gratefulness has the courage to trust and so overcomes fear.

Look closely and you will find that people are happy because they are grateful. The opposite of gratefulness is just taking everything for granted.