| Author Quoted | Josef Pieper |
| Title Quoted | Happiness and Contemplation |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1958/11/13 |
| Imprint | New York : Pantheon. 1958 |
| Quotation | "The whole of political life seems to be ordered with a view of attaining the happiness of contemplation. For peace which is established and preserved by virtue of political activity, places man in a position to devote himself to contemplation of the Truth." St. Thomas in Eth. quoted in Pieper's lucid Happiness and Contemplation, p. 94. Failure of materialistic society in US and in Russia-the lack of all sense of what to do with the time that has been saved by techniques, to fulfill one's practical life spontaneously seek fulfillment in contemplation but the wrong kind. TV etc. "The greatest menace to our capacity for contemplation is the incessant fabrication of tawdry, empty stimuli which kill the receptivity of the soul." Pieper.p. 102. |
| Quotation Source | A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3, 1952-1960.; Edited by Lawrence S. Cunningham. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1996, p. 230 |
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| Link to Merton's Copy |
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