The collection / 67 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1982 AD

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 / quote

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02c. 1982 AD

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 / quote

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03c. 1982 AD

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 / quote

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04c. 1982 AD

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 / quote

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05c. 1982 AD

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

John O'Donohue / quote

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06c. 1982 AD

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 / quote

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07c. 1982 AD

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 enoughto hear in the depths the laughter of god.

John O'Donohue / quote

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08c. 1982 AD

Beannacht / BlessingOn the day whenthe weight deadenson your shouldersand you stumble,may the clay danceto balance you.And when your eyesfreeze behindthe grey windowand the ghost of lossgets in to you,may a flock of colours,indigo, red, green,and azure bluecome to awaken in youa meadow of delight.When the canvas fraysin the currach of thoughtand a stain of oceanblackens beneath you,may there come across the watersa path of yellow moonlightto bring you safely home.May the nourishment of the earth be yours,may the clarity of light be yours,may the fluency of the ocean be yours,may the protection of the ancestors be yours.And so may a slowwind work these wordsof love around you,an invisible cloakto mind your life.

John O'Donohue / quote

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09c. 1982 AD

When one flower blooms spring awakens everywhere

John O'Donohue / quote

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10c. 1982 AD

When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us. There are people who see only dullness in the world and that is because their eyes have already been dulled. So much depends on how we look at things. The quality of our looking determines what we come to see.

John O'Donohue / quote

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11c. 1982 AD

The life and passion of a person leave an imprint on the ether of a place. Love does not remain within the heart, it flows out to build secret tabernacles in a landscape.

John O'Donohue / quote

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12c. 1982 AD

Real intimacy is a sacred experience. It never exposes its secret trust and belonging to the voyeuristic eye of a neon culture. Real intimacy is of the soul, and the soul is reserved.

John O'Donohue / quote

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13c. 1982 AD

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 / quote

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14c. 1982 AD

Inspiration is always a surprising visitor.

John O'Donohue / quote

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15c. 1982 AD

When time is reduced to linear progress, it is emptied of presence.

John O'Donohue / quote

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16c. 1982 AD

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 / quote

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17c. 1982 AD

...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 / quote

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18c. 1982 AD

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 / quote

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19c. 1982 AD

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 / quote

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20c. 1982 AD

Friendship is a creative and subversive force. It claims that intimacy is the secret law of life and universe.

John O'Donohue / quote

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21c. 1982 AD

When you steal a people's language, you leave their soul bewildered.

John O'Donohue / quote

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22c. 1982 AD

Beauty is the illumination of your soul.

John O'Donohue / quote

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23c. 1982 AD

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 / quote

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24c. 1982 AD

Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go 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 / quote

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