Hildebrand Quotes

#1. The great mystery of our metaphysical situation, that God is nearer to us than we are ourselves, is manifest in the fact that we cannot even be wholly ourselves - in the sense of individuality as a unique divine thought - until we are reborn in Christ.

Dietrich Von Hildebrand

#2. By living up to their calling, women will succeed in guaranteeing a proper recognition of the unique value of femininity and its crucial mission in the world.

Alice Von Hildebrand

#3. That there is no such thing as the scientific method, one might easily discover by asking several scientists to define it. One would find, I am sure, that no two of them would exactly agree. Indeed, no two scientists work and think in just the same ways.

Joel Henry Hildebrand

#4. Just as our parents' souls revolted against God, their bodies revolted against their souls, to which they had been subject. And they realized 'that they were naked.

Alice Von Hildebrand

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

Dietrich Von Hildebrand

#6. Do you think that the Lord gave them to me for a decoration?

Alice Von Hildebrand

#7. There is a sad forgetfulness of Christian modesty, especially in the life and dress of women.

Alice Von Hildebrand

#8. The men who have had the most to give to their fellow men are those who have enriched their minds and hearts in solitude. It is a poor education that does not fit a man to be alone with himself.

Joel Henry Hildebrand

#9. [I shall not] discuss scientific method, but rather the methods of scientists. We proceed by common sense and ingenuity. There are no rules, only the principles of integrity and objectivity, with a complete rejection of all authority except that of fact.

Joel Henry Hildebrand

#10. The best person able to appraise promise as a mathematician is a gifted teacher, and not a professional tester.

Joel Henry Hildebrand

#11. 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.

Dietrich Von Hildebrand

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

Dietrich Von Hildebrand

#13. The way to attain the virtue of mercy lies in our constant awareness of being encompassed by mercy.

Dietrich Von Hildebrand

#14. There is nothing more opposed to equality than identity.

Alice Von Hildebrand

#15. How fortunate for civilization, that Beethoven, Michelangelo, Galileo and Faraday were not required by law to attend schools where their total personalities would have been operated upon to make them learn acceptable ways of participating as members of "the group."

Joel Henry Hildebrand

#16. Wait on the LORD; be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD" (Psalm 27:14). God promises to strengthen your heart as you learn to wait upon Him through prayer, meditation, and worship. "O

Lloyd Hildebrand

#17. 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.

Dietrich Von Hildebrand

#18. An old fool is the worst of all fools.

Alice Von Hildebrand

#19. Is it surprising that today we have become so morally blind (for wickedness blinds) that we save the baby whales at great cost, and murder millions of unborn children?

Alice Von Hildebrand

#20. Unwittingly, the feminists acknowledge the superiority of the male sex by wishing to become like men.

Alice Von Hildebrand

#21. There are very few real teachers. Teaching is not a job; it is a vocation. To be a great one many qualities must be combined: love of truth, knowledge, reverence, loving concern for one's students, clarity and patience.

Alice Von Hildebrand

#22. Instead of adjusting students to docile membership in whatever group they happen to be placed, we should equip them to cope with their environment, not be adjusted to it, to be willing to stand alone, if necessary, for what is right and true.

Joel Henry Hildebrand

#23. Strong lives are motivated by dynamic purposes.

Kenneth Hildebrand

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

Dietrich Von Hildebrand

#25. Feminism without femininity is a sham.

Alice Von Hildebrand

#26. Very few people do anything creative after the age of thirty-five. The reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of thirty-five.

Joel Henry Hildebrand

#27. The world in which we now live is a world whose outlook is so distorted that we absolutize what is relative (money-making, power, success) and relativize what is absolute (truth, moral values, and God).

Alice Von Hildebrand

#28. Beauty kindles love, and only the one who remains captivated by it, only the one who is intoxicated by it, only the one who remains a lover while he is investigating its essence, can hope to penetrate its essence.

Dietrich Von Hildebrand

#29. 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.

Dietrich Von Hildebrand

#30. A child of the new generation Refused to learn multiplication. He said 'Don't conclude That I'm stupid or rude; I am simply without motivation.'

Joel Henry Hildebrand

#31. To be conscious of one's weakness and to trust in God's help is the way to authentic strength and victory.

Alice Von Hildebrand

#32. 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.

Dietrich Von Hildebrand

#33. The invention of IQ did a great disservice to creativity in education ... Individuality, personality, originality, are too precious to be meddled with by amateur psychiatrists whose patterns for a "wholesome personality" are inevitably their own.

Joel Henry Hildebrand

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

Dietrich Von Hildebrand

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

Dietrich Von Hildebrand