“Worldly people are in the habit of censuring those who give themselves up in earnest to God, regarding them as extravagant, in their withdrawal from the world, and in their manner of life. They say also of them that they are useless for all matters of importance, and lost to everything the world prizes and respects! This reproach the soul meets in the best way; boldly and courageously despising it with everything else that the world can lay to its charge. Having attained to a living love of God, it makes little account of all this; and that is not all: it confesses it itself in this stanza, and boasts that it has committed that folly, and that it is lost to the world and to itself for the Beloved.”

—  John of the Cross

Note to Stanza 29 part 1
Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, Notes to the Stanzas

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Worldly people are in the habit of censuring those who give themselves up in earnest to God, regarding them as extravag…" by John of the Cross?
John of the Cross photo
John of the Cross 48
Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint 1542–1591

Related quotes

Hermann Hesse photo

“Here is a doctrine at which you will laugh. It seems to me, Govinda, that Love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.”

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German writer

Siddhartha (1922)

Elizabeth Gilbert photo

“I want to be with God all the time. But I don't want to be a monk, or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what i want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer
Sallustius photo

“Souls that have lived in virtue are in general happy, and when separated from the irrational part of their nature, and made clean from all matter, have communion with the gods and join them in the governing of the whole world.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

XXI. That the Good are happy, both living and dead.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: Souls that have lived in virtue are in general happy, and when separated from the irrational part of their nature, and made clean from all matter, have communion with the gods and join them in the governing of the whole world. Yet even if none of this happiness fell to their lot, virtue itself, and the joy and glory of virtue, and the life that is subject to no grief and no master are enough to make happy those who have set themselves to live according to virtue and have achieved it.

John Bunyan photo

“Now, this… Mountain signified the Church of the living God; the Sun that shone thereon, the comfortable shining of his merciful Face on them that were therein; the Wall, I thought, was the Word, that did make separation between the Christians and the World; and the Gap which was in this Wall, I thought was Jesus Christ, who is the way to God the Father. But forasmuch as the Passage was wonderful narrow… it showed me that none could enter into Life, but those that were in downright earnest, and unless also they left this wicked World behind them; for here was only room for Body and Soul, but not for Body and Soul, and Sin.”

John Bunyan book Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666)

Sam Harris photo

“I think the apostates, the intellectuals, the women, the gays of the Muslim world are the most important people in the world right now. If we could give greencards to every real secularist in the Muslim world, I think they should just get to the front of the line. These are the people who need to be empowered. The irony is that if they could leave the Muslim world… The Muslim world needs them, so the best thing would be to empower them in the Muslim world. […] Everything I say about Islam is a confession of solidarity with these people.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, on The Rubin Report "Sam Harris: Islam vs All Muslims" (10 September 2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgu2HWltQ6E
2010s

Abu Talib al-Makki photo

“Asceticism concerns the soul for the next world. True asceticism means the thrusting out from the heart of all worldly thoughts reckoning them as vanity. It leads ultimately to friendship with God.”

Abu Talib al-Makki Scholar, mystic

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 86

Rich Mullins photo

“I think a lot of American people are infatuated with God, but we don't really love Him, and they don't really let Him love them. Being loved by God is one of the most painful things in the world. It's also the only thing that can bring us salvation. And it's like everything else that is really wonderful, there's a little bit of pain in it, little bit of hurt.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Wheaton, Illinois http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/wheaton-illinois-sep1590-backup-copy.html (September 15, 1990)
In Concert

Aldous Huxley photo

“It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with "I," "me," "mine," that we can truly possess the world in which we live. Everything, provided that we regard nothing as property. And not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else's.”

Aldous Huxley book The Perennial Philosophy

Source: The Perennial Philosophy

George Holmes Howison photo

“The aim of such a religion is not merely to "glorify God"; rather, it is to glorify all souls, as all in the image of God; to glorify them by fulfilling for every one of them its vocation to repeat in a new way the life of universal love that is the life of God, and thus to attain, through the universal greatening, such a real glorification of God as other forms of religion seek after in vain.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Right Relation of Reason to Religion, p.255

Johnny Cash photo

“I have tried drugs and a little of everything else, and there is nothing in the world more soul-satisfying than having the kingdom of God building inside you and growing.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Explo 72

Related topics