Edith Stein > Quotes

“Do not accept anything as love which lacks truth.”
― Edith Stein

“All those who seek truth, seek God, whether this is clear to them or not.”
― Edith Stein

“To suffer and to be happy although suffering, to have one’s feet on the earth, to walk on the dirty and rough paths of this earth and yet to be enthroned with Christ at the Father’s right hand, to laugh and cry with the children of this world and ceaselessly sing the praises of God with the choirs of angels—this is the life of the Christian until the morning of eternity breaks forth.”
― Edith Stein, The Hidden Life: Essays, Meditations, Spiritual Text

“The woman's soul is fashioned as a shelter in which other souls may unfold.”
-- Edith Stein”
― Edith Stein

“You can be at all fronts, wherever there is grief, in the power of the cross. Your compassionate love takes you everywhere, this love from the divine heart. Its precious blood is poured everywhere, soothing, healing, saving.”
― Edith Stein, Edith Stein: Essential Writings

“Each woman who lives in the light of eternity can fulfill her vocation no matter if it is in marriage, in a religious order or in a worldly profession.”
― Edith Stein

“At some point we must plunge in to discover a greater expanse; yet when this broader horizon does appear, a new depth will open up at our point of entry.”
― Edith Stein, Potency and Act

“Intellect is the light which illuminates its path, and without this light, emotion changes back and forth. In fact, if emotions prevail over the intellect, it is able to obscure the light and distort the picture of the entire world…. Emotional stirrings need the control of reason and the direction of the will.”
― Edith Stein, Essays on Woman: 002;Collected Works of Edith Stein

“Appropriate environmental influences can prevent mistakes. The soul of a child is soft and impressionable. Whatever influence enters there can easily form it for a lifetime. When the facts of salvation history are introduced in early childhood and in an appropriate form, this may easily lay a foundation for a saintly life.”
― Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross

“The entirely comfortable being-at-home in the world, the satiety of pleasures that it offers, the demand for these pleasures and the matter-of-course consent to these demands—all of this that human nature considers bright daily life—all of this is darkness5 in God’s eyes and incompatible with the divine light. It has to be totally uprooted if room for God is to be made in the soul. Meeting this demand means engaging in battle with one’s own nature all along the line, taking up one’s cross and delivering oneself up to be crucified. Holy Father St. John here invokes the Lord’s saying in this connection: “Whoever does not renounce all that the will possesses cannot be my disciple” [Lk.”
― Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross

“Previously, perhaps using an Ignatian method, one has exercised the spiritual powers in the hours of meditation—the senses, imagination, understanding, the will. But now they won’t work. All efforts are in vain. The spiritual practices that up to now have been a source of inner joy become a torment, intolerably dull and fruitless. But there is no tendency to occupy oneself with worldly things. The soul desires more than all else to remain still, without bestirring itself, allowing all its faculties to rest.”
― Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross

“At first, after her conversion she thought she would have to renounce all that was secular and live totally immersed in God, but then she realized that, even in the contemplative life, you cannot sever all connection with the world, that the deeper you are drawn into God, the more you must go out of yourself to the world in order to carry the divine life into it.”
― Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross

“If the mystery of the cross becomes the inner form of this science, a living energy that allows the soul to be molded by what is received from this mystery, it turns into a science of the cross . On the contrary, excessive interior preoccupation with one’s own personal concerns can develop in the course of life into a general indifference to things religious.”
― Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross

“Once while Edith was visiting the cathedral of Frankfurt, a woman with a market basket entered and knelt down in one of the pews to pray briefly. This was something entirely new to her, leaving as deep an impression as the university lectures.”
― Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross

“So he writes for contemplative souls, and at a very particular point along their way he wants to take them by the hand, at a crossroad where most halt, perplexed, not knowing how to proceed.”
― Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross

“Wie wir „ursprünglich verstehen “, was Wahrheit ist, wenn wir erkennen, und was Gutheit ist, wenn unser Streben Erfüllung findet, so verstehen wir, was Schönheit ist, wenn jener „Glanz “ uns an die Seele rührt. Er begegnet uns in der sinnlichen Welt als das Strahlen des körperlichen Lichtes selbst, ohne das uns alle sinnliche Schönheit verborgen bliebe, als Farbenglanz und als Liebreiz körperlicher Gestalten. Aber er ist nicht an die Sinnenwelt gebunden. Es gibt eine geistige Schönheit : die Schönheit der Menschenseele,...”
― Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of Being

“Do not accept anything as the truth if it lacks love. And do not accept anything as love which lacks truth.”
― Edith Stein

“This inability may be grounded in an inborn dull-mindedness (in the literal sense), or in a general indifference developed in the course of a lifetime, or finally, in an insensitivity to certain impressions as a result of repeatedly ignoring them.”
― Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross

“To speak to Him thus is easier by nature for woman than for man because a natural desire lives in her to give herself completely to someone. When she has once realized that no one other than God is capable of receiving her completely for Himself and that it is sinful theft toward God to give oneself completely to one other than Him, then the surrender is no longer difficult and she becomes free of herself.”
― Edith Stein, Essays on Woman

“God the Creator is present in each thing and sustains it in existence. He has foreseen each, and knows it through and through with all its changes and destinies. By the might of his omnipotence he can do with each, at every moment, whatever he pleases. He can leave it to its own laws and the normal flow of events. He can also intervene with extraordinary measures. God dwells in this manner in every human soul, also. He knows each one from all eternity, with all the mysteries of her being and every wave that breaks over her life. She is in his power. It is up to him whether he leaves her to herself and the course of worldly events or whether, with his strong hand, he will interfere in her destiny. Such a marvel of his power is every rebirth of a soul through sanctifying grace.”
― Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross

“To speak to Him thus is easier by nature for woman than for man because a natural desire lives in her to give herself completely to someone. When she has once realized that no one other than God is capable of receiving her completely for Himself and that it is sinful theft toward God to give oneself completely to one other than Him, then the surrender is no longer difficult and she becomes free of herself. Then it is also self-evident to her to enclose herself in her castle, whereas, before, she was given to the storms which penetrated her from without again and again; and previously she had also gone into the world in order to seek something abroad which might be able to still her hunger. Now she has all that she needs; she reaches out when she is sent, and opens up only to that which may find admission to her.”
― Edith Stein, Essays on Woman

“The stanzas of the Dark Night and The Spiritual Canticle, which were composed in prison,41 give testimony to a rapturous union. Cross and night are the way to heavenly light: that is the joyful message of the cross.”
― Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross

“But John himself intuited that readers might find his thought dry or at least troublesome and admitted at the beginning of his Ascent of Mount Carmel that though the doctrine he was to expound was solid and good for everyone, not everyone would find it easy to take in. “We are not writing on moral and pleasing topics addressed to the kind of spiritual people who like to approach God along sweet and satisfying paths” (A. Prol. 8). Yet John advises perseverance and that thereby one will come to understand better, and then to read the work again. As Sr. Benedicta must have discovered, John becomes clearer and more beneficial and even pleasing to read as one reads more. In Science of the Cross she gives readers an opportunity to read John of the Cross again but in a different pattern.”
― Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross

“Our world is going through a crisis of dehumanization, breakup of family life, a general loss of moral values.”
― Edith Stein, Essays on Woman