John O'Donohue > Quotes

“One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silences. Often secrets are not revealed in words, they lie concealed in the silence between the words or in the depth of what is unsayable between two people.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“Every friendship travels at sometime through the black valley of despair. This tests every aspect of your affection. You lose the attraction and the magic. Your sense of each other darkens and your presence is sore. If you can come through this time, it can purify with your love, and falsity and need will fall away. It will bring you onto new ground where affection can grow again.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“Your beloved and your friends were once strangers. Somehow at a particular time, they came from the distance toward your life. Their arrival seemed so accidental and contingent. Now your life is unimaginable without them. Similarly, your identity and vision are composed of a certain constellation of ideas and feelings that surfaced from the depths of the distance within you. To lose these now would be to lose yourself.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. In the kingdom of love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“We do not need to go out and find love; rather, we need to be still and let love discover us.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“Beauty is the illumination of your soul.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“There is the solitude of suffering, when you go through darkness that is lonely, intense, and terrible. Words become powerless to express your pain; what others hear from your words is so distant and different from what you are actually suffering.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn breaking within you. Where before there was anonymity, now there is intimacy; where before there was fear, now there is courage; where before in your life there was awkwardness, now there is a rhythm of grace and gracefulness; where before you used to be jagged, now you are elegant and in rhythm with your self. When love awakens in your life, it is like a rebirth, a new beginning. ”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“For Equilibrium, a Blessing:
Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.

As the wind loves to call things to dance,
May your gravity by lightened by grace.

Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.

As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.

As silence smiles on the other side of what's said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.

As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.

May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of god.”
― John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Invocations and Blessings

“No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entrance. No one else can see the world the way you see it. No one else can feel your life the way you feel it. Thus it is impossible to ever compare two people because each stands on such different ground. When you compare yourself to others, you are inviting envy into your consciousness; it can be a dangerous and destructive guest.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“Your noble friend will not accept pretension but will gently and very firmly confront you with your own blindness. Such friendship is creative and critical; it is willing to negotiate awkward and uneven territories of contradiction and woundedness.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home. Understanding nourishes belonging. When you really feel understood, you feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person's soul.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where there is no more shadow, darkness, loneliness, isolation, or pain. They are home.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“Inspiration is always a surprising visitor.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“It could be a meeting on the street, or a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, then suddenly there is a flash of recognition and the embers of kinship glow. There is an awakening between you, a sense of ancient knowing.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never do back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“If you try to view yourself through the lenses that others offer you, all you will see are distortions; your own light and beauty will become blurred, awkward, and ugly. Your sense of inner beauty has to remain a very private thing.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and honor these possibilities. When love comes in to your life, unrecognized dimensions of your destiny awaken and blossom and grow. Possibility is the secret heart of time.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“The heart is the inner face of your life. The human journey strives to make this inner face beautiful. It is here that love gathers within you. Love is absolutely vital for a human life. For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. In love, you grow and come home to your self. When you learn to love and let yourself be loved, you come home to the hearth of your own spirit. You are warm and sheltered.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“The ego is the false self-born out of fear and defensiveness.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“If you try to avoid or remove the awkward quality, it will pursue you. The only effective way to still its unease is to transfigure it, to let it become something creative and positive that contributes to who you are.
Nietzche said that one of the best days in his life was the day when he rebaptized all his negative qualities as his best qualities. Rather than banishing what is at first glimpse unwelcome, you bring it home to unity with your life…..One of your sacred duties is to exercise kindness towrd them. In a sense, you are called to be a loving parent to your delinquent qualiites”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“One of the most beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement. When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed on your own.”
― John O'Donohue, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong

“You are like nobody since I love you"
-Pablo Neruda

This art of love discloses the special and sacred identity of the other person. Love is the only light that can truly read the secret signature of the other person's individuality and soul. Love alone is literate in the world of origin; it can decipher identity and destiny”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.”
― John O'Donohue

“Unfinished Poem
I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”
― John O'Donohue

“It is lovely to meet an old person whose face is deeply lined, a face that has been deeply inhabited, to look in the eyes and find light there.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“When one flower blooms spring awakens everywhere”
― John O'Donohue

“All you can ever achieve is a sense of your soul. You gain little glimpses of its light, colors, and contours. You feel the inspiration of its possibilities and the wonder of its mysteries.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“The world rests in the night. Trees, mountains, fields, and faces are released from the prison of shape and the burden of exposure. Each thing creeps back into its own nature within the shelter of the dark. Darkness is the ancient womb. Nighttime is womb- time. Our souls come out to play. The darkness absolves everything; the struggle for identity and impression falls away. We rest in the night.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown.”
― John O'Donohue

“May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder. ”
― John O'Donohue, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong

“Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“You are as young as you feel. If you begin to feel the warmth of your soul, there will be a youthfulness in you that no one will be able to take away from you.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“When time is reduced to linear progress, it is emptied of presence.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“Your soul is the priestess of memory, selecting, sifting, and ultimately gathering your vanishing days toward presence.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“Human skin is porous; the world flows through you. Your senses are large pores that let the world in. By being attuned to the wisdom of your senses, you will never become an exile in your own life, an outsider lost in an external spiritual place that your will and intellect, have constructed.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“One of the deepest longings of the human soul is to be seen.”
― John O'Donohue

“Even though life may have moved wearily and painfully through such a person, they have still managed not to let it corrode their soul. In such a face a lovely luminosity shines out into the world. It casts a tender light that radiates a sense of wholeness and wholesomeness.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“...to gaze into the face of another is to gaze into the depth and entirety of his life.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“When you look at some faces, you can see the turbulence of the infinite beginning to gather to the surface. This moment can open in a gaze from a stranger, or in a conversation with someone you know well. Suddenly, without their intending it or being conscious of it, their gaze lasts for only a second. In that slightest interim, something more than the person looks out.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“We do not need to operate according to the idea of a predetermined program for our lives.
”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“the search for meaning is really the search for the lost chord. When the lost chord is discovered by humankind, the discord in the world will be healed and the symphony of the universe will come into complete harmony with itself.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“Transience is the force of time that makes a ghost of every experience. There was never a dawn, regardless how beautiful or promising, that did not grow into a noontime. There was never a noon that did not fall into afternoon. There was never an afternoon that did not fade toward evening. There never was a day yet that did not get buried in the graveyard of the night. In this way transience makes a ghost out of everything that happens to us.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“When you steal a people's language, you leave their soul bewildered.”
― John O'Donohue

“On its outer surface time is vulnerable to transience. Regardless of its sadness or beauty, each day empties and vanishes. In its deeper heart, time is transfiguration. Time minds possibility and makes sure that nothing is lost or forgotten. That which seems to pass away on the surface of time is in fact transfigured and housed in the tabernacle of memory.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“Consumerism is the worship of the god of quantity; advertising is its liturgy. Advertising is schooling in false longing.”
― John O'Donohue, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong

“...the only difference between a young person at the height of their exuberance and a very old person who is frail and physically wasted is time.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“The duty of priviledge is absolute intregity”
― John O'Donohue