John O'Donohue

John O'Donohue
John O'Donohuewas an Irish poet, author, priest, and Hegelian philosopher. He was a native Irish speaker, and as an author is best known for popularising Celtic spirituality...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth1 January 1956
CountryIreland
healing reality miracle
It is a strange and wonderful fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here. Rilke said, ‘Being here is so much,’ and it is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed. We are here. We are wildly and dangerously free.
kindness journey destiny
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.
flames people emptiness
We cannot fill up our emptiness with objects, possessions or people. We have to go deeper into that emptiness, then we will find beneath nothingness the flame of love to warm us.
real healing love-is
Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition.
friendship lying compassion
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.
beautiful home order
In turning away from beauty, we turn away from all that is wholesome and true, and deliver ourselves into an exile where the vulgar and artificial dull and deaden the human spirit [] In contrast, the Beautiful offers us an invitation to order, coherence, and unity. When these needs are met, the soul feels at home in the world.
wall lying heart
This is the time to be slow, Lie low to the wall Until the bitter weather passes. Try, as best you can, not to let The wire brush of doubt Scrape from your heart All sense of yourself And your hesitant light. If you remain generous, Time will come good; And you will find your feet Again on fresh pastures of promise, Where the air will be kind And blushed with beginning.
inspirational love-is differences
One of the most precious things you should always preserve in a friendship and in love is your own difference.
blessing light circles
A blessing is a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal and strengthen.
destiny compassion soul
When you are compassionate with yourself, you trust in your soul, which you let guide your life. Your soul knows the geography of your destiny better than do.
dream destiny needs
There is an unseen life that dreams us; it knows our true direction and destiny. We can trust ourselves more than we realize, and we need have no fear of change.
distance ideas feelings
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.
inspirational heaven quests
We [humans] are the only creatures who are in-between. We're of the earth, but don't belong to it, because we strain after the heavens; and yet the heavens aren't full in us. So this wonderful, restless, eternal longing in us has us always on a quest.
waiting silence world
Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits.