Quotes from Marguerite Porete

Reason, you'll always be half-blind.

Theologians and other clerks, You won't understand this book, -- However bright your wits -- If you do not meet it humbly, And in this way, Love and Faith Make you surmount Reason, for They are the protectors of Reason's house.

They have no shame, no honor, no fear for what is to come. They are secure, says Love. Their doors are open. No one can harm them.

Love is no destruction, but rather instruction, nourishment and sustenance for those who trust in it, for Love is repletion and the abyss and the fullness of the sea.

Love: Ah, Reason, says Love, you will always see with one eye only, you and all those who are nurtured by your doctrine. For the man is indeed one-eyed who sees the things which are before his eyes yet does not know what they are; and this is the case with you.

it was a common dictum among both Scholastic and mystical theologians that whereas the intellect receives its object according to its own measure, love dilates to the measure of its object. As a corollary, some taught that affection leaves understanding wholly behind in mystical union with God, others that the will draws understanding after it into divine union, or that "love itself is knowledge.

If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all thou hast and give it all to poor and then sue[8] me and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.

Reason: Ah, Love, says Reason, when are such Souls in the true freedom of Pure Love? Love: When they have no longing, no feeling, and at no time any affection of the spirit; for such customs would enslave them, being too far away from the peace of freedom in which few men permit themselves to dwell. And also they do nothing, says Love, which is opposed to the peace of their inner being, and so in peace they bear the orders of Love.

These souls, saith love, live of knowing of love and of hearing. This is [the] continual usage of these souls without departing them [therefrom]: for knowing and love and magnifying dwelleth in them. These souls, that be such, cannot find the good nor the evil, nor have knowing of themselves to make judgement whether they be converted or perverted.

Thus she entereth and walketh in the way of illumination, that she might be taught into the ghostly influences of the divine work of God, there to be drenched[7] in the high flood, and oned to God by ravishing of love, by which she is all one spirit with her spouse.

such calls for caution

I have said before, says the Soul, that I lack nothing, because my beloved has from all time sufficient, 2 out of his just nobility, and will have enough for evermore. What then should I lack? I do not love myself, or him, or his works, 3 except only for him. And what he has, which I do not have and shall not have, is more my own than what I do and shall have in my possession from him himself.

O Soul touched of God, dissevered from sin, in the first estate of grace, ascend by divine grace into the seventh estate of grace, where the soul hath her fullhead of perfection by divine fruition in life of peace. And among you, actives and contemplatives, that to this life may come, hear now some crumbs[1] of the clean love, of the noble love, and of the high love of the free souls, and how the Holy Ghost hath his sail in his ship.