Johannes Tauler Quotes

If America is too arrogant, too prideful to repent, it's not the kind of country that God wants it to be.

I have many deep thoughts in God, but I take my own measure, lest I perish by boasting... For I myself, though I am in chains and can comprehend heavenly things, the ranks of the angels and the hierarchy of principalities, things visible and invisible, for all this I am not yet a disciple.

If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.

An humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning.

Religion is meant to teach us true spiritual human character. It is meant for self-transformation. It is meant to transform anxiety into peace, arrogance into humility, envy into compassion, to awaken the pure soul in man and his love for the Source, which is God.

When it comes to spiritual truth, how can we know that we are on the right path? One way is by asking the right questions - the kind that help us ponder our progress and evaluate how things are working for us.

Deep down, I know that I am a child of God who has inherited divine capacities; some of them I strive to develop, others are left languishing. I also have a human side. I lose my temper, lose patience and sometimes judge others and myself.

If we rationalize our problems when He points them out, we will spend less and less time meditating because we won't want to face God in that area of our lives.

We should not have a petty regard for God's gifts, though we may and should despise our own imperfections.

The word of God teacheth lowliness of mind; it teacheth us to know ourselves.

Humility is honestly assessing ourselves in light of God’s holiness and our sinfulness.

Judge yourself; if you sincerely and humbly do that, you will not be judged by God.

You are not mature if you have a high esteem of yourself. He who boasts in himself is but a babe in Christ, if indeed he be in Christ at all. Young Christians may think much of themselves. Growing Christians think themselves nothing. Mature Christians know that they are less than nothing. The more holy we are, the more we mourn our infirmities, and the humbler is our estimate of ourselves.

The reason we see hypocrisy and fraud and unreality in others is because they are all in our own hearts. The great characteristic of a saint is humility-Yes, all those things and other evils would have been manifested in me but for the grace of God, therefore I have no right to judge.

A watchful eye must be kept on ourselves lest while we are building ideal monuments of Renown and Bliss here we neglect to have our names enrolled in the Annals of Heaven.

A pharisee is hard on others and easy on himself, but a spiritual man is easy on others and hard on himself.

No one should ever say that it was my ignorance if I did or showed forth anything however small according to God's good pleasure; but let this be your conclusion and let it so be thought, that - as is the perfect truth - it was the gift of God.

God comes first. Paradise is not cheap.

Nay, men are so far from musing of their sins, that they disdain this practise, and scoff at it: what say they, if all were of your mind; what should become of us? Shall we be always poring on our corruptions?

Purity is not imposed upon us as though it were a kind of punishment, it is one of those mysterious but obvious conditions of that supernatural knowledge of ourselves in the Divine, which we speak of as faith. Impurity does not destroy this knowledge, it slays our need for it.

None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can't teach people that - they have to learn by experience.

Humility is nothing else but a right judgment of ourselves.

For a believer, Christian faith is true to the human heart, not in the sense that any old thing we fancy believing in will become conveniently true - but because the complicated truth about our hearts, as we struggle to perceive it, tells us what we are and where we are, and consequently what we need.

I'm not a god - I do bad things.

Brethren, it is easier to declaim against a thousand sins of others, than to mortify one sin in ourselves.