John O'Donohue Quotes

The human soul is hungry for beauty; we seek it everywhere - in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture, gardening, companionship, love, religion, and in ourselves. No one would desire not to be beautiful. When we experience the beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming.

- John O'Donohue

Our trust in the future has lost its innocence. We know now that anything can happen from one minute to the next. Politics, religion, economics, and the institutions of family and community all have become abruptly unsure.

- John O'Donohue

Much of the stress and emptiness that haunt us can be traced back to our lack of attention to beauty. Internally, the mind becomes coarse and dull if it remains unvisited by images and thoughts that hold the radiance of beauty.

- John O'Donohue

When you acknowledge the integrity of your solitude, and settle into its mystery, your relationships with others take on a new warmth, adventure and wonder.

- John O'Donohue

We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender. Each morning, we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night, we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more.

- John O'Donohue

When we hear the word 'beauty', we inevitably think that beauty belongs in a special elite realm where only the extraordinary dwells. Yet without realizing it, each day each one of us is visited by beauty. When you actually listen to people, it is surprising how often beauty is mentioned. A world without beauty would be unbearable.

- John O'Donohue

We need great prophetic leaders in religion and in spirituality... what we are getting is lacking in vision... not able to engage with the diversity of the culture.

- John O'Donohue

Most people are enduring a marginalized isolation. One of the great obstacles to modern friendships is the 'religion of rush.' People are rushing all the time through time. Friendship takes time.

- John O'Donohue

Listen carefully to yourself. Listen to what you dislike, and you will find most of the imagery is what you have received and registered from other people. We ingest labels from others.

- John O'Donohue

A blessing is a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal and strengthen.

- John O'Donohue

Beauty does not linger; it only visits. Yet beauty's visitation affects us and invites us into its rhythm; it calls us to feel, think and act beautifully in the world: to create and live a life that awakens the Beautiful. A life without delight is only half a life.

- John O'Donohue

A lot of suffering is just getting rid of dross in yourself, and lingering and hanging in the darkness is often - I say this against myself - a failure of imagination, to imagine the door into the light.

- John O'Donohue

When we hear some beautiful piece of Mozart or admire a wonderful building, we suddenly become present in ourselves. That's unusual nowadays because dishevelment and distraction have become an art form.

- John O'Donohue

Good friends won't let you off the hook when you shouldn't be let off the hook. You can let fall the masks we seem to need to survive in a cutthroat world. There is a value of truth that we typically don't find in other parts of life.

- John O'Donohue

The beauty of the Catholic church is that it has a sacramental structure that can hold its own with the best out of any tradition. It has a mystical system and content that can hold its own with the best out of Tibet... its an amazing tradition, but I think you need to be critical.

- John O'Donohue

I always was kind of on the edge of the church when I was fully in it, cos I was always asking the questions... And I could never believe blindly.

- John O'Donohue

If you have a trust in and an expectation of your own solitude, everything that you need to know will be revealed to you.

- John O'Donohue

Either we are in the universe to inhabit the eternity of our souls and grow real, or else we might as well dedicate our days to shopping and kill time watching talk-shows.

- John O'Donohue

There is an instinct that emerges when we get quiet with people. We know who's close.

- John O'Donohue

I think the divine is like a huge smile that breaks somewhere in the sea within you, and gradually comes up again.

- John O'Donohue

The sacred duty of being an individual is to gradually learn how to live so as to awaken the eternal within you.

- John O'Donohue

The best decision I ever made was to become a priest and I think the second best was to resign.

- John O'Donohue

I believe that our friends among the dead really mind us and look out for us. Often there might be a big boulder of misery over your path about to fall on you, but your friends among the dead hold it back until you have passed by.

- John O'Donohue

The joyful heart sees and reads the world with a sense of freedom and graciousness.

- John O'Donohue