Edith Stein: Quotes about the soul

Edith Stein was Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on soul.
Edith Stein: 68 quotes8 likes

“The relationship of soul and body is different in man and woman; the relationship of soul to body differs in their psychic life as well as that of the spiritual faculties to each other. The feminine species expresses a unity and wholeness of the toal psychosomatic personality and a harmonious development of faculties. The masculine species strives to enhance individual abilities in order that they may attain their highest achievements.”

Edith Stein

Essays on Woman (1996), Problems of Women's Education (1932)

“Only the person blinded by the passion of controversy could deny that woman in soul and body is formed for a particular purpose.”

Edith Stein

Essays on Woman (1996), The Ethos of Woman's Professions (1930)
Context: Only the person blinded by the passion of controversy could deny that woman in soul and body is formed for a particular purpose. The clear and irrevocable world of Scripture declares what daily experience teaches from the beginning of the world: woman is destined to be wife and mother.

“Woman's soul is present and lives more intensely in all parts of the body, and it is inwardly affected by that which happens to the body; whereas, with men, the body has more pronoucedly the character of an instrument which serves them in their work and which is accompanied by a certain detachment.”

Edith Stein

Essays on Woman (1996), Spirituality of the Christian Woman (1932)

“Christ embodies the ideal of human perfection: in Him all bias and defects are removed, and the masculine and feminine virtues are united and their weaknesses redeemed; therefore, His true followers will be progressively exalted over their natural limitations. That is why we see in holy men a tenderness and a truly maternal solicitude for the souls entrusted to them while in holy women there is manly boldness, proficiency, and determination.”

Edith Stein

Essays on Woman (1996), The Separate Vocations of Man and Woman According to Nature and Grace (1932)

“The teacher thus needs a basic education in dogma and asceticism. Apologetics is certainly also good, but the former seems more important to me: ready arguments, as right as they may be, often do not have penetrating force. But she whose soul is formed through the truths of faith — and I call this ascetic formation — finds words which are proper for this human being and for this moment respectively.”

Edith Stein

Essays on Woman (1996), The Significance of Woman's Intrinsic Value in National Life (1928)

“The intrinsic value of woman consists essentially in exceptional receptivity for God's work in the soul, and this value comes to unalloyed development if we abandon ourselves confidently and unresistingly to this work.”

Edith Stein

Essays on Woman (1996), The Significance of Woman's Intrinsic Value in National Life (1928)

“Every profession in which woman's soul comes into its own and which can be formed by woman's soul is an authentic woman's profession.”

Edith Stein

Essays on Woman (1996), The Ethos of Woman's Professions (1930)

“The soul of woman must therefore be expansive and open to all human beings; it must be quiet so that no small weak flame will be extinguished by stormy winds; warm so as not to benumb fragile buds; clear, so that no vermin will settle in dark corners and recesses; self-contained, so that no invasions from without can imperil the inner life; empty of self, in order that extraneous life may have room in it; finally, mistress of itself and also of its body, so that the entire person is readily at the disposal of every call.”

Edith Stein

Essays on Woman (1996), Fundamental Principles of Women's Education (1931)