Romano Guardini > Quotes

“The word is a thing of mystery, so volatile that it vanishes almost on the lip, yet so powerful that it decides fates and determines the meaning of existence. A frail structure shaped by fleeting sound, it yet contains the eternal: truth. Words come from within, rising as sounds fashioned by the organs of a man's body, as expressions of his heart and spirit. He utters them, yet he does not create them, for they already existed independently of him. One word is related to another; together they form the great unity of language, that empire of truth-forms in which a man lives.”
― Romano Guardini, Preparing Yourself for Mass

“Philosophy goes into the problem deeply, without changing being at all. Religion tells me that I have been created; that I am continuously receiving myself from divine hands, that I am free yet living from God’s strength. Try to feel your way into this truth, and your whole attitude towards life will change. You will see yourself in an entirely new perspective. What once seemed self-understood becomes questionable. Where once you were indifferent, you become reverent; where self-confident, you learn to know “fear and trembling.” But where formerly you felt abandoned, you will now feel secure, living as a child of the Creator-Father, and the knowledge that this is precisely what you are will alter the very tap-root of your being”
― Romano Guardini

“The idea that everyone is strong enough to bear immediate contact with God is false, and conceivable only by an age that has forgotten what it means to stand in the direct ray of divine power, that substitutes sentimental religious ‘experience’ for the overwhelming reality of God’s presence. To claim that everyone could and should be exposed to that reality is sacrilegious.”
― Romano Guardini, The Lord

“The constant talker will never, or a least rarely, grasp truth. Of course even he must experience some truths, otherwise he could not exist. He does notice certain facts, observe certain relations, draw conclusions and make plans. But he does not yet possess genuine truth, which comes into being only when the essence of an object, the significance of a relaton, and what is valid and eternal in this world reveal themselves. This requires the spacousness, freedom, and pure receptiveness of that inner “clean-swept room” whilch silence alone can create”
― Romano Guardini

“It is also said that the sheep heed the Shepherd, because they know his voice. Is it true that men recognize Christ's call and respond to it? In one sense it must be, for he has said so; yet much in me qualifies the statement. Actually I respond much more readily to the call of 'the others'; I neither really understand Christ's summons nor follow it. Therefore, in order that I may hear, he must not only speak, but also open my ears to his voice. Part of me, the profoundest part, listens to it, but superficial, loud contradiction often overpowers it. The opponents with whom God must struggle in order to win us are not primarily ‘the others,’ but ourselves; we bar his way. The wolf who puts the hireling to flight is not only outside; he is also within. We are the arch-enemy of our own salvation, and the Shepherd must fight first of all with us – for us.”
― Romano Guardini, The Lord

“For the greatest things are accomplished in silence—not in the clamor and display of superficial eventfulness, but in the deep clarity of inner vision; in the almost imperceptible start of decision, in quiet overcoming and hidden sacrifice.”
― Romano Guardini, The Lord

“Jesus was no cold Superman—he was more human than any of us. Entirely pure, unweakened by evil, he was loving and open to the core. His ardor, truth, sensitivity, power, capacity for joy and pain were unlimited, and everything that happened to him happened in the immeasurableness of his divinity.”
― Romano Guardini, The Lord

“To know Christ entails accepting his will as norm. When we feel this we draw back, startled for it means the cross. The it is better to say honestly: “I can’t yet,” than to mouth pious phrases. Slow there with the large words “self-suffender,” and “sacrifice.” It is better to admit our weakness and ask him to teach us strength.”
― Romano Guardini, The Lord

“It is impossible to consider God as a Christian should with heart and head full of earthly business, society, worries or pleasures. At first it is a question of choice between good thinking and evil, right doing and wrong; soon, however, we realize that this is not enough; that we must also limit the good and beautiful things to make room for God. We cannot practice love in Christ’s sense and at the same time accept the natural standards of honor and dishonor, self-respect and bourgeois estimation. On the contrary, we must realize how egocentric, fallen and profoundly untrue those standards are. What”
― Romano Guardini, The Lord

“None of the great things in human life springs from the intellect; every one of them issues from the heart and its love.”
― Romano Guardini, The Lord

“Asceticism means that a man resolves to live as a man.”
― Romano Guardini, Learning the Virtues: That Lead You to God

“But how does God speak within us? And how does He enable us to understand His word and to answer it with ours. His voice and our hearing and answering we call “conscience.” This is a wonderful thing. Constantly, we are touched by the call which comes to us from the good, the right, that which is worthy of being and should be. This good is all-inclusive and yet quite simple. It constantly urges us, “Do me. Realize me. Carry me into the world so that the kingdom of the good may come into being.” And let us assume that a voice within us, our conscience, replies, “Yes, I will, but how shall I do this?” And thereupon follows a silence, for the good is as unlimited in content as it is simple in form, and so it cannot simply be “done.”
― Romano Guardini, Learning the Virtues: That Lead You to God

“Man has always mistreated what was important to him, for his love does not have a tender hand.”
― Romano Guardini, Rosary of Our Lady

“something must exist in which the truth of the heart can constantly renew itself, in which the spirit can be cleansed, the eye cleared, the character strengthened. And there is: adoration. Nothing is more important for man than to incline his spirit before God, personally to experience the truth that is God—this is great and sacred and salutary for body and soul.”
― Romano Guardini, The Lord

“The saints do not live merely in books and pictures but in reality. They love those who are joined with them in Christ; and so from this union of a common love there is no knowing what contacts and relationships may spring.”
― Romano Guardini, Art of Praying: The Principles and Methods of Christian Prayer

“Essentially a soldier, the Christian is always on the lookout.”
― Romano Guardini, Meditations Before Mass

“We must not oppose what is new and try to preserve a beautiful world that is inevitably perishing. Nor should we try to build a new world of the creative imagination that will show none of the damage of what is actually evolving. Rather, we must transform what is coming to be. But we can do this only if we honestly say yes to it and yet with incorruptible hearts remain aware of all that is destructive and nonhuman in it. Our age has been given to us as the soil on which to stand and the task to master.”
― Romano Guardini, Letters from Lake Como: Explorations in Technology and the Human Race

“The Transfiguration is the summer lightning of the coming Resurrection. Also of our own resurrection, for we too are to partake”
― Romano Guardini, The Lord

“On the other hand, if a renunciation is to be truly heroic, the thing renounced must admittedly be valuable.”
― Romano Guardini, The Church and the Catholic

“Love of neighbor and love of God belong together: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart . . .” and “thy neighbor as thyself.” By that same token: “And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors” (Matt. 22:37–39; 6:12). The love Christ means is a live current that comes from God, is transmitted from person to person, and returns to God. It runs a sacred cycle reaching from God to an individual, from the individual to his neighbor, and back through faith to God. He who breaks the circuit at any point breaks the flow of love. He who transmits purely, however small a part of that love, helps establish the circuit for the whole. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Purity of heart means not only freedom from confusion through the senses, but a general inner clarity and sincerity of intent before God. Those who possess it see God, for he is recognized not by the bare intellect, but by the inner vision. The eye is clear when the heart is clear, for the roots of the eye are in the heart. To perceive God then, we must purify the heart; it helps little to tax the intellect. Finally, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be recognized”
― Romano Guardini, The Lord

“But when man confronts the restlessness of his intellect and is caught in the whirl of modern life, he loses all relation to the Rosary.”
― Romano Guardini, Rosary of Our Lady

“That Jesus’ task “is consummated” must be true, because he says so (John 19:30). Yet what a spectacle of failure! His word rejected, his message misunderstood, his commands ignored. None the less, his appointed task is accomplished, through obedience to the death—that obedience whose purity counterbalances the sins of a world. That Jesus delivered his message is what counts—not the world’s reaction; and once proclaimed, that message can never be silenced, but will knock on men’s hearts to the last day.”
― Romano Guardini, The Lord

“The Rosary is not a road, but a place, and it has no goal but a depth. To linger in it has great compensations.”
― Romano Guardini, Rosary of Our Lady

“To understand antiquity’s idea of man, we must examine its gods and heroes, myths and legends. In these we find the classical prototype of genuine man. ... the will to greatness, wealth, power and fame. Anything opposed to it falls short of the authentically human. ...

What a world of difference between this conception and that to which Christ has led us! ...

Jesus’ friends are in no way remarkable for their talent or character. He who considers the apostles or disciples great from a human or religious point of view raises the suspicion that he is unacquainted with true greatness. Moreover, he is confusing standards, for the apostle and disciple have nothing to do with such greatness. Their uniqueness consists of their being sent, of their God-given role of pillars for the coming salvation.”
― Romano Guardini, The Lord

“In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord says: “Therefore, if thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother has anything against thee, leave thy gift before the altar and go first to be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift” (Matt. 5:23-24). This means: When you go to Mass and you recall that you have been unjust to someone and that he bears you a grudge, you cannot simply walk into church as though nothing were wrong. For then you would be entering only the physical room of the building, not the congregation, which would not receive you, as you would destroy it by your mere presence.”
― Romano Guardini, Meditations Before Mass

“The core of the new epoch's intellectual task will be to integrate power into life in such a way that man can employ power without forfeiting his humanity.”
― Romano Guardini

“The profoundest motive which leads us toward the saints is the desire simply to be in their company — to abide with them. It is love seeking the communion of those who have dedicated their lives to love and who are now fulfilled in it; it is the desire for that holy atmosphere in which the soul can breathe and for the mysterious current which nourishes it; it is the longing for the answer to the ultimate meaning of existence.”
― Romano Guardini, Art of Praying: The Principles and Methods of Christian Prayer

“In a closer scrutiny of the lives of certain Christians we may be impressed by the discovery of a close connection with a saint. The relationship to the saints is wholesome and fundamentally natural and right. Admittedly, they were only human beings, but they have entered into the mystery of God and the new creation is completed in them. The believer does not seek in them great personalities, but rather God's witnesses in whom God has been fulfilled.”
― Romano Guardini, Art of Praying: The Principles and Methods of Christian Prayer

“There are moments when we suddenly and directly apprehend the incomprehensible, overwhelming fact that we are. Despite the tribulations and burdens of life it still remains a great grace and wonder that we are allowed to breathe, to feel, to think, to love, and to act — in short, to live. And that things exist: the jug on the table, the tree in the field, the landscape around us, and the sun in the sky; and that other people also exist: this person whom I love, that other one who is in my care. In those moments one realizes that nothing can be taken for granted; that everything has the hallmark of free gift and of grace; that one must give thanks for everything — and even that one must give thanks for being able to give thanks. We”
― Romano Guardini, The Art of Praying: The Principles and Methods of Christian Prayer

“One might object that in order to conceive of the universe as a limited whole, the universe must already have been grasped as limited. Such an intuition, so goes the argument, would have had to presuppose the defining boundaries of its world. This does not, however, hold true for the experience of classical man as far as I can see. His vision resulted from a mental act which sets limits to his being, which fended off the chaotic and the indefinite and which renounced every excess. It also developed from a sense of harmony in which existence was perceived as a beautifully ordered cosmion.”
― Romano Guardini, The End of The Modern World: With Power and Responsibility