Julian of Norwich Quotes on Love
Julian of Norwich (1343–c.1416) — the English anchoress whose Revelations of Divine Love (Showings) is the first surviving book in English known to have been written by a woman — gave late medieval mystical theology one of its most celebrated treatments of divine love. The sixteen revelations Julian received during a near-fatal illness in 1373, and the long meditation on them composed over the following decades, develop the central thesis that love is the meaning of the entire created order — the famous formula “love was His meaning” — alongside the parallel teaching that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. The framework, with its maternal imagery for the divine and its insistence on the absolute primacy of love over judgment, shaped the modern recovery of medieval women’s mystical writing through Thomas Merton, Denise Levertov, and the broader contemplative renewal.
Quotes
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“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 27 -
“Love was His meaning.”
Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 86 -
Attributed to Julian of Norwich:
“The greatest honour we can give Almighty God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of His love.”
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“We are kept all as securely in Love in woe as in weal, by the Goodness of God.”
Wikiquote -
“Our Lord Jesus sheweth in love His blissful heart even cloven in two, rejoicing.”
Wikiquote -
“The love that made Him to suffer passeth as far all His pains as Heaven is above Earth.”
Chapter 22 -
“There was a treasure in the earth which the Lord loved. I marvelled and thought what it might be, and I was answered in mine understanding: It is a food which is delectable and pleasant to the Lord.”
Chapter 51 -
“Because of this great, endless love that God hath to all Mankind, He maketh no disparting in love between the blessed Soul of Christ and the least soul that shall be saved.”
Chapter 54 -
“I saw full surely that all the works that God hath done, or ever shall, were fully known to Him and aforeseen from without beginning. And for Love He made Mankind, and for the same Love would be Man.”
Chapter 57 -
“God willeth that we endlessly hate the sin and endlessly love the soul, as God loveth it.”
Chapter 40 -
“We give our intent to love and meekness, by the working of mercy and grace we are made all fair and clean.”
Chapter 40 -
“He that made all things for love, by the same love keepeth them, and shall keep them without end.”
Chapter 8 -
“Love was without beginning, is, and shall be without ending. For which love He said full sweetly these words: If I might suffer more, I would suffer more.”
Chapter 22