Henry Suso > Quotes

“If you strive to do your best in all things, people will take it as being the worst thing possible from you. And those whom you strive to treat most circumspectly will reward you most ungraciously. No one can please everyone to the same degree. If, however, you want to try it, you will be out of step with God and the truth. Base people’s rebukes are the praises of good people.”
― Henry Suso, Henry Suso: The Exemplar, with Two German Sermons (Classics of Western Spirituality

“By ignorance the truth is known.”
― Henry Suso

“One should not judge pleasure according to the senses. One should judge it according to truth. . . . The power to renounce gives one more power than to possess things.”
― Henry Suso, Henry Suso: The Exemplar, with Two German Sermons”
― Henry Suso

“[T]here was a woman who had set her heart intensely on a kind of transitory love called flirtation, which is a poison to spiritual happiness. He said to her that if she wished to lead a calm spiritual existence, she would have to give this up and take eternal Wisdom as her beloved in place of her present love. This was difficult for her to do because she was young and lively and was already engaged in such a relationship. . . . When she returned home, a misshapen hump quickly grew on her back, making her ugly; and she had to give up of necessity what she did not want to give up for love of God. . . .

Subsequent detachment arises in that he goes to his death resigned because he cannot do anything else. This detachment is also good and leads him to heaven, but the other kind was incomparably nobler and better.

Therefore one should not take all risks and remain in wrong behavior, as some foolish people claim: that a person who wants to achieve perfect detachment must wade through all forms of wrong. That is wrong because a person who out of bravado throws himself into a dirty puddle thinking that he will become more beautiful afterward is a fool. This is why the most prudent of the friends of God keep this resolve, that they forsake themselves completely and remain constantly in preceding detachment and never take it back, as far as human weakness allows. . . .

One should not judge pleasure according to the senses. One should judge it according to truth. . . . The power to renounce gives one more power than to possess things.”
― Henry Suso, Henry Suso: The Exemplar, with Two German Sermons (Classics of Western Spirituality

“If a man cannot comprehend the matter, let him be passive, and the matter will comprehend him.”
― Henry Suso, The Life of Blessed Henry Suso

“The more mangled, the more deathly I am for love, the more lovely am I to a well-regulated mind.
My unfathomable love shows itself in the great bitterness of My passion, like the sun in its brightness, like the fair rose in its perfume, like the strong fire in its glowing heat.
Therefore, hear with devotion how cruelly I suffered for thee.”
― Henry Suso, A Little Book of Eternal Wisdom