Edith Stein Quotes on Life
Edith Stein, the phenomenologist who became a Carmelite nun, brought both philosophical rigour and religious devotion to her reflections on life, and the quotes gathered here draw on both. As a philosopher trained under Husserl, Stein insisted on the priority of the concrete and living: everything abstract is ultimately part of the concrete, and even the most abstract activity stands in ultimate service to a living whole. As a religious thinker she described the goal of the religious life as an absolute gift of self to God in a self-forgetting love. She also held that a person can fulfil her vocation in any state of life, whether in marriage, in a religious order, or in a worldly profession, provided it is lived in the light of eternity. Drawn from her philosophical and spiritual writings, these passages present life as concrete, purposeful, and ordered toward self-giving love.
Quotes
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Attributed to Edith Stein:
“All that comes to me from God is a sign of His love.”
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Attributed to Edith Stein:
“The world doesn't need what women have. It needs what women are.”
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“Everything abstract is ultimately part of the concrete. Everything inanimate finally serves the living. That is why every activity dealing in abstraction stands in ultimate service to a living whole.”
Wikiquote -
“The motive, principle, and end of the religious life is to make an absolute gift of self to God in a self-forgetting love, to end one's own life in order to make room for God's life.”
Wikiquote -
“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.”
Spirituality of the Christian Woman(1932) -
“We can do nothing ourselves; God must do it. 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.”
Fundamental Principles of Women's Education(1931) -
“For a wholesome collaboration of the sexes in professional life will be possible only if both achieve a calm and objective awareness of their nature and draw practical conclusions from it.”
The Ethos of Woman's Professions(1930)