Hadewijch Quotes

19 Sourced Quotes

Although the season is joyful everywhere,
And mountain and valley are all verdant,
That would seem a truly small matter to him
Who has met mischance in love...

Hadewijch
Nowadays this is the way everyone loves himself; people wish to live with God in consolations and repose, in wealth and power, and to share the fruition of his glory. We all indeed wish to be God with God, but God knows there are few of us who want to live as men with his Humanity, or want to carry his cross with him, or want to hang on the cross with him and pay humanity's debt to the full.

Hadewijch
Do good under all circumstances, but with no care for any profit, or any blessedness, or any damnation, or any salvation, or any martyrdom; but all you do or omit should be for the honor of Love.

Hadewijch
Where the abyss of his wisdom is, he will teach you what he is, and with what wondrous sweetness the loved one and the Beloved dwell one in the other, and how they penetrate each other in such a way that neither of the two distinguishes himself from the other. But they abide in one another in fruition, mouth in mouth, heart in heart, body in body, and soul in soul, while one sweet divine nature flows through them both and being in each other they are both one and they remain completely one — yes, and remain so forever.

Hadewijch
They who stand ready to content Love are also eternal and unfathomable. They who stand ready to content Love are also eternal and unfathomable. For their conversation is in heaven, and their souls follow everywhere their Beloved who is unfathomable For their conversation is in heaven, and their souls follow everywhere their Beloved who is unfathomable

Hadewijch
Now understand the deepest essence of your soul, I remained in a state of oneness with my Beloved, so that I melted into him and ceased to be myself what 'soul' is. Soul is a being that can be beheld by God and by which, again, God can be beheld. Soul is also a being that wishes to content God … The soul is a bottomless abyss in which God suffices to himself; And I was transformed and absorbed in the spirit and his own self-sufficiency ever finds fruition to the full in this soul, as the soul, for its part, ever does in him. Soul is a way for the passage of God from his depths to his liberty; and God is a way for the passage of the soul into its liberty, that is, into his inmost depths, which cannot be touched except by the soul's abyss.

Hadewijch
And in this unity into which I was taken and where I was enlightened, File: Kamas3. jpg We were one without distinction... just as a beloved may receive her lover in the full pleasure of seeing and hearing, with the one becoming one with the other I understood this Being and knew it more clearly than, by speech, reason, or sight, one can know anything that is knowable on earth

Hadewijch
They wish to dissuade me
From all that the forces of Love urge me to.
They do not understand it, and I cannot explain it to them.
I must then live out what I am;
What Love counsels my spirit,
In this is my being: for this reason I will do my best.

Hadewijch
Be fervent in God, and let nothing grieve you, whatever you encounter.

Hadewijch
Even if you do the best you can in all things, your human nature must often fall short; so entrust yourself to God's goodness, for his goodness is greater than your failures.

Hadewijch
All things are too small to hold me,
I am so vast
In the Infinite
I reach for the Uncreated
I have
touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide
Everything else
is too narrow
You know this well,
you who are also there.

Hadewijch
For earth cannot understand heavenly wisdom. Words enough and Dutch enough can be found for all things on earth, but I do not know any Dutch or any words that answer my purpose. Although I can express everything insofar as this is possible for a human being, no Dutch can be found for all I have said to you, since none exists to express these things, so far as I know

Hadewijch
The New Year has come to us.
God be blessed for it.

Hadewijch
In the intimacy of the One,
Those souls are pure and inwardly naked,
without images, without figures,
As if liberated from time, uncreated,
Freed from their limits in silent latitude

Hadewijch
Love has seven names,
Which, as you know, are appropriate to her;
Chain, light, live coal, and fire — dew, living spring, and hell.

Hadewijch
Tighten
to nothing
the circle
that is
the world's things
Then the Naked
circle
can grow wide,
enlarging,
embracing all

Hadewijch
What use is it for me to force my nature?
For my nature shall always remain
What it is and conquer what belongs to it,
However men may narrow its path.

Hadewijch
They who live without Love are dead.
But the worst of all deaths is this —
That the loving soul be cowardly toward Love;
For perfect Love is never cowardly,
But claims its rights, which it lacks.

Hadewijch
When at that time I was in a state of terrible weariness, I saw a great eagle, flying towards me from the altar. And he said to me: "If you wish to become one, then prepare yourself." And I fell to my knees and my heart longed terribly to worship that One Thing in accordance with its true dignity, which is impossible—I know that, God knows that, to my great sadness and burden. And the eagle turned, saying, "Righteous and most powerful Lord, show now the powerful force of your Unity for the consummation with the Oneness of yourself." And he turned back and said to me, "He who has come, comes again, and wherever he never came, there he will not come."

Hadewijch