314 Quotes by John O'Donohue

Our culture is absolutely obsessed with information. There is more information now available in the world than ever before. We have so much knowledge about every possible thing. Yet there is great difference between knowledge and wisdom. You can know many things, you can know a lot of facts about things, even facts about yourself, but it is the truths that you realize yourself that move deeply into you. Wisdom, then, is a deeper way of knowing.

The ego is the false self-born out of fear and defensiveness.

The secret and the sacred are sisters. When the secret is not respected, the sacred vanishes. Consequently, reflection should not shine too severe or aggressive a light on the world of the soul.

We put terrible pressure on our minds. When we tighten them or harden our views or beliefs, we lose all the softness and flexibility that makes for real shelter, belonging, and protection. Sometimes the best way of caring for your soul is to make flexible again some of the views that harden and crystalize your mind; for these alienate you from your own depth and beauty.

Your soul mediates between your body and your mind; it shelters the two and holds them together.

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

Sometimes our spiritual programs take us far away from our inner belonging. We become addicted to the methods and programs of psychology and religion. We become so desperate to learn how to be, that our lives pass, and we neglect the practice of being.

Beauty is the illumination of your soul.

If you go out for several hours into a place that is wild, your mind begins to slow down, down, down. What is happening is that the clay of your body is retrieving its own sense of sisterhood with the great clay of the landscape.