Quotes by Richard Rohr

About Richard Rohr:

Richard Rohr, O.F.M. is a Franciscan friar ordained to the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church in 1970. He is an internationally known inspirational speaker and has published numerous recorded talks and books, most recently Yes, And...: Daily Meditations, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, and Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

True spirituality is not taught, it's caught. Once our sails have been unfurled to the Spirit, henceforth our motivation for the journey toward holiness and wholeness is immense gratitude.

Richard Rohr

People who have been initiated "broke through in what felt like breaking down".

Richard Rohr

Our religious institutions are not giving very many men access to credible encounters with the holy or even with their own wholeness. We largely give men mandates, signposts, scaffolding and appealing images that tend to create religious identity and...

Richard Rohr

If you do not acquire good training in detachment, you may attach to all the wrong things.

Richard Rohr

Every missed rite of passage leads to a new rigidification of the personality.

Richard Rohr

True baptism allows us to reframe, and contain, the reality of evil, without needing to blame anyone else, without any need for shame or vengeance. We are all in this together, and our common wound shows itself in different ways.

Richard Rohr

Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.

Richard Rohr

With improved historical records, and easier access to them, we actually have better reasons for hating one another, for anger and violence toward one another.

Richard Rohr

Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment instead. It is such a willingness to live with bewilderment that characterizes the true wise man.

Richard Rohr

Ability to laugh at evil, to relativize symbols without dismissing them is usually a sign of a rather healthy person. Puritans and reformers can never laugh.

Richard Rohr

Right words make all of us feel falsely important. Right action keeps all of us forever beginners.

Richard Rohr

The soul needs meaning as much as the body needs food.

Richard Rohr

Final authority in the spiritual world does not tend to come from any kind of agenda success but from some kind of suffering. Insecurity and impermanence are the best spiritual teachers.

Richard Rohr

Perhaps the True Self--and the full Christ Mystery (not the same as organized Christianity)--will always live in the backwaters of any empire and the deep mines of any religion.

Richard Rohr

I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then, I must watch my reaction to it. I have no other way of spotting both my denied shadow self and my idealized persona.

Richard Rohr

If change and growth are not programmed into your spirituality, if there are not serious warnings about the blinding nature of fear and fanaticism, your religion will always end up worshiping the status quo and protecting your present ego position an...

Richard Rohr

I do not think you should get rid of your sin until you have learned what it has to teach you.

Richard Rohr

Often it takes outer authority to send us on the path to our own inner authority.

Richard Rohr

When you get your,'Who am I?', question right, all of your,'What should I do?' questions tend to take care of themselves

Richard Rohr

You ironically have to have a very strong ego structure to let go of your ego. You need to struggle with the rules more than a bit before you throw them out. You only internalize values by butting up against external values for a while.

Richard Rohr

Author Bio

  • NameRichard Rohr
  • DescriptionAmerican spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest
  • BornMarch 20, 1943
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPriest; Writer