Angelus Silesius Quotes

“All Heaven is within thee, Man,
And all of Hell within thy heart:
What thou dost choose and will to have,
That hast thou wheresoe'er thou art.”

“Christ could be born a thousand times in Bethlehem – but all in vain until He is born in me.”

“Christ was born a man for me,
for me he died -
Unless I become God
through Him,
His birth is mocked
His death denied”

“Though Jesus Christ in Bethlehem
A thousand times his Mother bore,
Is he not born again in thee
Then art thou lost for evermore.”

“The Thought and Deed of Deity
Are of such richness and extent
That It remaineth to Itself
An Undiscovered Continent.”

“God far exceeds all words that we can here express
In silence He is heard, in silence worshiped best”

“So high above all things that be.
Is God uplifted, man can dare.
No utterance: he prayeth best.
When Silence is his sum of prayer”

“If neither love nor pain
Will ever touch thy heart,
Then only God's in thee,
And then in God thou art”

“God is a flowing well which constantly may pour
Into his whole Creation, and yet be as before.”

“Naught ever can be known in God: One and Alone Is He.
To know Him, Knower must be one with Known.”

“Here I still flow in God as a small stream of time,
There I shall be a sea of blessedness sublime”

“Two eyes our souls possess:
While one is turned on time,
The other seeth things
Eternal and sublime”

“God is an utter Nothingness,
Beyond the touch of Time and Place:
The more thou graspest after Him,
The more he fleeth thy embrace.”

“Though Christ a thousand times
in Bethleham be born
And not within thyself,
Thy soul will be forlorn”

“Time is eternity and eternity is time, just as long as you yourself don't make them different”

“He has not lived in vain
who learns to be unruffled
by loss, by gain,
by, joy, by pain.”

“In waste God hides the gold, accept what He may send,
The great within the small, though we don't comprehend.”

“The rose is without 'why'; it blooms simply because it blooms. It pays no attention to itself, nor does it ask whether anyone sees it.”

“If you know how to launch your ship into God's sea
Oh, what a blessed fate, submerged in it to be”

“A Loaf holds many grains of corn
And many myriad drops the Sea:
So is God's Oneness Multitude
And that great Multitude are we.”

“God, being a great abyss, to men his depth reveals
Who climb the highest peak of the eternal hills”

“Thou laughest that a child cries o'er its broken doll;—
The things o'er which thou mournest—are they not playthings all?”

“Where is my dwelling place? Where I can never stand. Where is my final goal, toward which I should ascend?
It is beyond all place. What should my quest then be? I must, transcending God, into the desert flee”

“Saints do not die. It is their lot,
To die while on this earth to all that God is not.”

“In schools throughout the world God's but described to you.
Within the spirit's school one sees and loves him too.”

“Three days: Today, Tomorrow and Yesterday, I know,
Yet if the past were cancelled within the here and now
And then the future hidden, I could regain that Day
Which I, before I was, had lived in God's own way.”

“How fleeting is this world
yet it survives.
It is ourselves that fade from it
and our ephemeral lives.”

“Even before I was me, I was God in God;
And I can be once again, as soon as I am dead to myself”

“Travel within thyself!
The Stone Philosophers with wisest arts Have vainly sought,
cannot be found By travelling in foreign parts.”

“No thought for the hereafter have the wise,
for on this very earth they live in paradise”

“The Wise Man is that which he hath.
The precious Pearl of Paradise Wouldst thou not lose,
then must thou be Thyself that Pearl of greatest price.”

“How short our span!
If you once realized how brief,
you would refrain
from causing any beast or man
the smallest grief, the slightest pain.”

“The World doth not imprison thee.
Thou art thyself the World, and there, Within thyself,
thou hold'st thyself Thy self-imprisoned Prisoner.”

“The resurrection is
In spirit done in thee,
As soon as thou from all
Thy sins hast set thee free.”

“Ah, were men's voices like the wood-birds' melody— Each happy note distinct, but all in harmony!”

“Love is alike to death, annihilates the senses,
My heart it breaks as well, the spirit's drawn from hence”

“A spark without its fire, a drop without its sea,
Without rebirth what more, pray, wouldst thou be?”

“The nearest way to God
Leads through love's open door;
The path of knowledge is
Too slow for evermore”

“Who would expect it so?
From darkness light is brought,
Life rises out of Death,
And Something comes from Naught.”

“If thou dost love a Something, Man,
Thou lovest naught that doth abide.
God is not This nor That—do thou
Leave Somethings utterly aside”

“True prayer requires no word, no chant
no gesture, no sound.
It is communion, calm and still
with our own godly Ground”

“No man has known perfect felicity,
Until his otherness is drowned in unity”

“No ray of Light can shine
if severed from its source.
Without my inner Light
I lose my course.”

“If otherwise, the All remains
Asunder-riven manyness”

“The All proceedeth from the One,
And into One must All regress”

“The vengeful God of wrath and punishment
is a mere fairytale. It simply is the Me
That makes me fail.”

“O Man, as long as you exist, know, have, and cherish,
You have not been delivered, believe me, of your burden.”

“The Cross on Golgotha
Thou lookest to in vain,
Unless within thine heart
It be set up again”

“Unless you find paradise at your own center,
there is not the smallest chance
That you may enter”