22 tweets on happiness and contemplation (by Josef Pieper)

Josef Pieper, Happiness & Contemplation, St. Agustine’s Press. South Bend, 1998,

1. We want happiness by nature (20)
2. The ultimate gratification of human nature, the ultimate satiation of man's deepest thirst, takes place in contemplation! (18)
3. Happiness can virtually be defined as the epitome of those things which the will is incapable of not willing (21)
4. St. Thomas: "Power has the quality of beginning, but happiness that of the ultimate end" (37)
5. Possession of the good is the cause of rejoicing. This having an partaking of the good is primary; joy is secondary (45)
6. Joy is nothing but the quietatio appetitus in bono, the appeasement of desire in the good that has been made one's own (49)
7. Happiness is an act and an activity of the soul (...) Cognition is true activity (55)
8. The essence of happiness consists in an act of the intellect (58)
9. It is impossible to speak of happiness without speaking of the will (62)
10. Possession of the beloved, St. Thomas holds, takes place in an act of cognition, in seeing, in intuition, in contemplation (63)
11. Knowing is the highest mode of having (65)
12. Love is the indispensable premise of happiness (71)
13. Only the presence of what is loved makes us happy, and that presence is actualized by the power of cognition (71)
14. What distinguishes contemplation is rather this: it is a knowing which is inspired by love (72)
15. Contemplation is a type of knowing which does not merely move towards its object, but already rests in it (74)
16. Contemplation is able to quench man's thirst more than anything else because it affords a direct perception of the presence of God (78)
17. The vital function of the arts in man's life, consists in this: that through them contemplation of the created world is kept active and alive (85)
18. Contemplation directs its gaze straight at the heart of objects (86) 
19. Which distinguish the happy man is simplicitas, the simplicity peculiar to the gaze of contemplation (100)
20. Happiness demands eternity (...), the capacity to feel unhistorically (101)
21. The contemplative person lacks nothing; omnia secum portat. He cannot even be disturbed (103)
22. Contemplation does not rest until it has found the object which dazzles it (109)

Original: 

Glück und Kontemplation

Kösel-Verlag

Mönchen, 1958.