Jakob Bohme

“When we consider the beginning of our life, and compare the same with the eternal life, which we have in the promise, we cannot say nor find that we are at home in this life.”

“Adam was the image of God, he was man and woman, and yet neither of them before his Eve, but a masculine virgin in peculiar love, full of chastity and purity.”

“God's love-eye does not see essentially into the wicked rebellious apostate soul; neither also into the devil, but his anger-eye sees thereinto; that is, God, according to the property of the anger or fire of wrath, sees in the devil, and in the false soul.”

“All strife concerning Christ's testaments cometh hence that men do not understand that Heaven wherein Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. They understand not that he is in this World, and that the World standeth in Heaven, and Heaven in the World, and are in one another, as Day and Night.”

“The sour quality is set opposite to the bitter and the sweet, and is a good temper to all, a refreshing and cooling when the bitter and the sweet qualities are too much elevated or too preponderant.”

“If Love dwelt not in Trouble, it could have nothing to love. But its substance which it loves, namely the poor soul, being in trouble and pain, it hath thence cause to love this its own substance and to deliver it from pain, that so itself may by it be again beloved.”

“The sweet quality is set opposite to the bitter, and is a gracious, amiable, blessed and pleasant quality, a refreshing of the life, an allaying of the fierceness. It maketh all pleasant and friendly in every creature; it maketh the vegetables of the earth fragrant and of good taste, affording fair, yellow, white and ruddy colours.”

“Just as a drop of water in the ocean cannot avail much; but if a great river runneth into it, that maketh a great commotion.”

“If we incline our wills in true earnest singleness to God, then we go with Christ out of this world, out from the stars and elements, and enter into God; for in the will of reason we are children of the stars and elements, and the spirit of this world ruleth over us.”

“We are children of the eternity: But this world is an out-birth out of the eternal; and its palpability taketh its original in the anger; the eternal nature is its root.”

“For God is himself the Being of all Beings, and we are as gods in him, through whom he revealeth himself.”

“A shepherd, in whom the spirit of God works, is more highly esteemed before God than the wisest and most potent in self-wit, without the divine dominion.”

“If men would as fervently seek after love and righteousness as they do after opinions, there would be no strife on earth, and we should be as children of one father, and should need no law or ordinance. For God is not served by any law, but only by obedience.”

“All that men will serve God with must be done in Faith, viz. in the Spirit. It is the Spirit that maketh the work perfect, and acceptable in the sight of God. All that a man undertaketh and doeth in Faith, he doth in the Spirit of God, which Spirit of God doth co-operate in the work, and then it is acceptable to God.”

“God wills in man only that which is good, in the kingdom of his grace; where the free will yields itself up into the grace, there God wills that which is good in the will, through the grace.”

“The virtue of Love is nothing and all, or that Nothing visible out of which All Things proceed. Its power is through All Things; its height is as high as God; its greatness is as great as God.”

“The pure Deity is in all places and all corners, and present every where all over: the birth of the holy Trinity in one essence is every where: and the angelical world reacheth to every part, wherever you can think, even in the midst of the earth, stones, and rocks: as also hell and the kingdom of God's wrath is every where all over.”

“Love is higher than the Highest. Love is greater than the Greatest. Yea, it is in a certain sense greater than God; while yet, in the highest sense of all, God is Love, and Love is God. Love being the highest principle is the virtue of all virtues; from whence they flow forth.”

“Time past, present, and to come, as also depth and height, near and afar off, are all one in God, one comprehensibility.”

“A Cherubim or leader of a kingdom of angels is the fountain or heart of his whole kingdom, and is made out of all the powers out of which his angels are made, and is the most powerful and the brightest of them all.”