Leisure. The Basis of Culture

Josef Pieper. St. Augustine’s Press.

Leisure. The Basis of Culture.

There can only be leisure, when man is at one with himself.

…leisure as “non-activity” - an inner absence of preoccupation, a calm, an ability to let things go, to be quiet.

Leisure is a form of stillness that is the necessary preparation for accepting reality; only the person who is still can hear, and whoever is not still, cannot hear.

“The highest state to which humanity can aspire is wonder” - Goethe

…the sense of wonder is nevertheless the sense that the world is a deeper, wider, more mysterious thing than appeared to the day-to-day understanding.