Teresa of Avila Quotes on Knowledge
Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582), the Castilian Carmelite reformer whose Way of Perfection (1566) and The Interior Castle (1577) gave Counter-Reformation Spain two of its most accomplished works of mystical theology, defended a contemplative epistemology in which the soul progresses through seven concentric "mansions" of self-knowledge toward the central chamber in which the spiritual marriage with the Trinitarian God is consummated. The framework treats the higher modes of religious knowledge as experientially distinguishable from imaginative or intellectual states the soul might confuse with them, and Teresa's careful descriptive phenomenology of the stages of prayer supplies one of the most influential discriminative analyses of mystical experience in the Western Christian tradition.
Quotes
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“V: Loving complaints and petitions; Martha's complaint," in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila Vol. 1, p. 379.”
It is love alone that gives value to all things. -
“Pain is never permanent.”
The Book of Positive Quotations (2007) edited by John Cook, Steve Deger, and Leslie Ann Gibson, p. 333 -
“The Way of Perfection , p. 41”
He who cares nothing for the good things of the world has dominion over them all. -
“Ch. I "Childhood and early Impressions" ¶ 4”
One of my brothers was nearly of my own age; and he it was whom I most loved, though I was very fond of them all, and they of me. He and I used to read Lives of Saints together. When I read of martyrdom undergone by the Saints for the love of God , it struck me that the vision of God was very cheaply purchased; and I had a great desire to die a martyr's death , — not out of any love of Him of whic -
“Reflect upon the providence and wisdom of God in all created things and praise Him in them all.”
Maxims for Her Nuns (1963) | Maxim 35, p. 258 -
“We shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavoring to know God ; for, beholding His greatness we realize our own littleness ; His purity shows us our foulness; and by meditating upon His humility we find how very far we are from being humble.”
Interior Castle(1577) | First Mansions, Ch. 2 : The Human Soul, as translated by the Benedictines of Stanbrook (1911), revised and edited by Fr. Benedict Zimmerman