Dietrich Von Hildebrand Quotes

There are really no serious arguments for communion in the hand. But there are the most gravely serious kinds of arguments against it.

Love is not concerned with a person's accomplishments, it is a response to a person's being: This is why a typical word of love is to say: I love you, because you are as you are.

When we love somebody, whether it be a friend, a parent, a child, whether it be conjugal love or neighborly love, the beloved person always stands before us as something precious and noble in himself.

Humility involves the full knowledge of our status as creatures, a clear consciousness of having received everything we have from God.

Purity perceives and respects the character of sex-its depth, seriousness, intimacy, and true home within wedded love, which alone makes possible the total and mutual gift of self.

One saintly priest attracts more souls to Christ ... than do those who lack the imprint of their sacred office

To whom will the sublime beauty of a sunset or a Ninth Symphony of Beethoven reveal itself, but to him who approaches it reverently and unlocks his heart to it? To whom will the mystery that lies in life and manifests itself in every plant reveal itself in its full splendor, but to him who contemplates it reverently? But he who sees in it only a means of subsistence or of earning money, that is, something that can be used or employed, will not discover the meaning, structure, and significance of the world in its beauty and hidden dignity.

Happiness is love's outcome, never its motive. Where someone is loved he is an end in himself and certainly not a means toward something else. It is therefore of love's essence, wherever it is found, that the loved one seem precious, beautiful, and worthy of love.

For, just as love embodies the life of all virtues and expresses the inmost substance of all holiness, humility is the precondition and basic presupposition for the genuineness, the beauty, and the truth of all virtue.

Better to be a beggar in freedom than to be forced into compromises against my conscience.

Sex is essentially deep. We become what we do with our bodies, and there is no deeper act than sex.

The soldier of Christ is obligated to fight against sin and error. His battle against the Antichrist is prompted by his loved for Christ, and for the salvation of souls. He fights this battle for the salvation of those who have gone astray. His attitude is one of true love. But those who flee from the inevitable battle, and treat irenically those who have gone astray, obfuscating their error and playing down their revolt against God, are, fundamentally, victims of egoism and complacency.

The basic attitude of reverence is the presupposition for every true love, above all, the love of neighbor, because it alone opens our eyes to the value of men as spiritual persons, and because, without this awareness, no love is possible. Reverence for the beloved one is also an essential element of every love. To give attention to the specific meaning and value of his individuality, to display consideration toward him, instead of forcing our wishes on him, is part of reverence. It is from reverence that there flows the willingness of a lover to grant the beloved the spiritual "space" needed to freely express his own individuality. All these elements of every true love flow from reverence. What would a mother's love be without reverence for the growing being, for all the possibilities of value that yet lie dormant, for the preciousness of the child's soul?