Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by John O’Donohue (Irish Philosopher, Priest)

John O’Donohue (1956–2008,) fully John Joseph O’Donohue, was an Irish priest, Hegelian philosopher, poet, and writer. He is best known for promoting Celtic spirituality.

Born into a native Gaelic-speaking family on a farm in Caherbeanna, near Blackhead, County Clare, O’Donohue studied English literature, philosophy, and theology at the University of Ireland in Maynooth. He was ordained into the priesthood in 1979 and completed a MA in 1982.

O’Donohue pursued his philosophical studies at Tübingen University, Germany, and wrote his PhD (1990) dissertation on German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s philosophical theology in German. He returned to Ireland and lectured in philosophy while leading a parish life. He left the priesthood and, since 2000, spent most of his time living in solitude in a secluded spot in the west of Ireland.

O’Donohue wrote in a long-form prayer style that marked a life spent in meditation and solitude. His book on Celtic spirituality, Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World (1997,) became a word-of-mouth hit, racing up the bestseller lists.

O’Donohue’s other works are Eternal Echoes: Exploring our Hunger to Belong (1998,) Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (2004,) and The Four Elements: Reflections on Nature (2010.) His poetry collections are Echoes of Memory (1994) and Conamara Blues (2001.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by John O’Donohue

The duty of priviledge is absolute intregity.
John O’Donohue

When one flower blooms spring awakens everywhere.
John O’Donohue

When we become isolated, we are prone to being damaged; our minds lose their flexibility and natural kindness; we become vulnerable to fear and negativity. The sense of belonging keeps you in balance amidst the inner and outer immensities. The ancient and eternal values of human life – truth, unity, goodness, justice, beauty, and love are all statements of belonging; they are also the secret intention and dream of human longing.
John O’Donohue
Topics: Balance, Goodness

We have surface time, which is the time we move through every day, but we need to reach the rhythms of deep time. Like the ocean is all waves and movement on the surface, we need to sink through time to the depths where the true rhythm lies.
John O’Donohue
Topics: Time

When you learn to embrace your self with a sense of appreciation and affection, you begin to glimpse the goodness and light that is in you and gradually you will realize that you are worthy of respect from yourself. When you recognize your limits, but still embrace your life with affection and graciousness, the sense of inner dignity begins to grow. You become freer and less dependent on the affirmation of outer voices and less troubled by the negativity of others.
John O’Donohue

Although you should not erase your responsibility for the past, when you make the past your jailer, you destroy your future. It is such a great moment of liberation when you learn to forgive yourself, let the burden go, and walk out into a new path of promise and possibility.
John O’Donohue
Topics: The Past, Responsibility, Past

When you tame and domesticate the divine it loses its danger and it’s power to forgive you, make you happy, or its power to challenge you, and call you towards new growth.
John O’Donohue
Topics: Forgiveness

We do not need to go out and find love; rather, we need to be still and let love discover us.
John O’Donohue

In order to inherit your freedom, you need to go towards it. You have to claim your own freedom before it becomes yours.
John O’Donohue
Topics: Freedom

Habit is a strong invisible prison.
John O’Donohue
Topics: Habit

We rush through our days in such stress and intensity, as if we were here to stay and the serious project of the world depended on us. We worry and grow anxious; we magnify trivia until they become important enough to control our lives. Yet all the time we have forgotten that we are but temporary sojourners on the surface of a strange planet spinning slowly in the infinite night of the cosmos.
John O’Donohue
Topics: Worry

Celtic spirituality is awakening so powerfully now because it illuminates the fact that the visible is only one little edge of things. The visible is only the shoreline of the magnificent ocean of the invisible.
John O’Donohue
Topics: Vision

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

Often regret is very false and displaced, and imagines the past to be totally other than it was.
John O’Donohue
Topics: Regret

Creativity is rich with unexpected possibility. Know-how is mere fragmented mechanics which lacks tradition.
John O’Donohue
Topics: To Be Born Everyday, Creativity

It’s a dangerous thing to name yourself wrongly or to name yourself unjustly.
John O’Donohue
Topics: Being True to Yourself

Each of us is alone in the world. It takes great courage to meet the full force of your aloneness. … When you face your aloneness, something begins to happen. Gradually, the sense of bleakness changes into a sense of true belonging. This is a slow and open-ended transition but it is utterly vital in order to come into rhythm with your own individuality.
John O’Donohue
Topics: Solitude

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