Josef Pieper - Man Quotes

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It could even be said, perhaps, that this very opposition, this threat from the world of total work, is what characterizes the situation of philosophy today more than its own particular content. Philosophy increasingly adopts — necessarily, it seems — the character of the alien, of mere intellectual luxury, of that which seems ever more intolerable and unjustifiable, the more exclusively the demands of the daily world of work take over the world of man.

Josef Pieper
If in this supreme test, in face of which the braggart falls silent and every heroic gesture is paralyzed, a man walks straight up to the cause of his fear and is not deterred from doing that which is good — which ultimately means for the sake of God, and therefore not from ambition or from fear of being taken for a coward — this man, and he alone, is truly brave.

Josef Pieper
The eye of perfected friendship with God is aware of deeper dimensions of reality, to which the eyes of the average man and the average Christian are not yet opened.

Josef Pieper
The brave man uses wrath for his own act, above all in attack, 'for it is peculiar to wrath to pounce upon evil. Thus fortitude and wrath work directly upon each other.

Josef Pieper
The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which is set upon hard work appears to be this: man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refused to have anything as a gift.

Josef Pieper
Justice is a habit (habitus), whereby a man renders to each one his due with constant and perpetual will.

Josef Pieper
All just order in the world is based on this, that man give man what is his due.

Josef Pieper
The intemperately wrathful man is less obnoxious than the intemperately lustful one, while the immoderate pleasure-seeker, intent on dissimulation and camouflage, is unable to give or take a straight look in the eye.

Josef Pieper