Quotes from Johannes Tauler

Man must do his part and detach himself from created things.

I never mingled with men, but I came home less of a man than I went out.

In prayerful silence you must look into your own heart. No one can tell you better than yourself what comes between you and God. Ask yourself. Then listen!

Give yourself entirely to God, enter and hide in the hidden ground of your soul.

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

God touches and moves, warns and desires all equally, and He wants one quite as much as another. The inequality lies in the way in which His touch, His warnings, and His gifts are received.

Let God and all his creation teach you what your sins are.

To discern what weaknesses and faults separate you from God, you must enter into your own inward ground and then confront yourself.

If you fall seventy times a day, rise seventy times and return to God so that you will not fall too often.

Rid yourself of anything that is not directed toward God.

Judge yourself; if you do that you will not be judged by God, as St. Paul says. But it must be a real sense of your own sinfulness, not an artificial humility.

What matters most is a good and ready will to obey God.

As a good wine must be kept in a good cask, so a wholesome body is the proper foundation for a well-appointed inner ground.

God does not lead all His servants by one road, nor in one way, nor at one time; for God is in all things; and that man is not serving God aright, who can only serve Him in his own self-chosen way.

Never believe that true prayer consists in mere babbling, reciting so many psalms and vigils, saying your beads while you allow your thoughts to roam.

If we really want to achieve true prayer, we must turn our backs upon everything temporal, everything external, everything that is not divine.

In the most intimate, hidden and innermost ground of the soul, God is always essentially, actively, and substantially present. Here the soul possesses everything by grace which God possesses by nature.

Your meditations may be as profound, as exalted, as devout as you like; you may practise every pious exercise you can manage, but all this is as nothing in comparison with the Blessed Sacrament. What we do may be godly, but this sacrament is God Himself!

A good meditation, even when it is interrupted by occasional nodding, is much more beneficial than many outward religious exercises.

Spiritually good people, pure in heart, who long for the Blessed Sacrament but cannot receive at the time, can receive spiritually... even a hundred times a day, in sickness and in health, with immeasurable grace and profit.

Because in the school of the Spirit man learns wisdom through humility, knowledge by forgetting, how to speak by silence, how to live by dying.

God in His wisdom has decided that He will reward no works but His own.

Give yourself entirely to God, enter and hide in the hidden ground of your soul.

Often when He comes, He finds the soul occupied. Other guests are there, and He has to turn away. He cannot gain entry, for we love and desire other things; therefore, His gifts, which He is offering to everyone unceasingly, must remain outside.