“Our Soul may never have rest in things that are beneath itself.”

— Julian of Norwich

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 67
Context: Our Soul may never have rest in things that are beneath itself. And when it cometh above all creatures into the Self, yet may it not abide in the beholding of its Self, but all the beholding is blissfully set in God that is the Maker dwelling therein. For in Man’s Soul is His very dwelling; and the highest light and the brightest shining of the City is the glorious love of our Lord, as to my sight.

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Julian of Norwich372

English theologian and anchoress 1342–1416

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“We must not think that faith itself is the soul's rest; it is only the means of it. We cannot find rest in any work or duty of our own, but we may find it in Christ, whom faith apprehends for justification and salvation.”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 236.

“God willeth to be known, and it pleaseth Him that we rest in Him; for all that is beneath Him sufficeth not us. And this is the cause why that no soul is rested till it is made nought as to all things that are made. When it is willingly made nought, for love, to have Him that is all, then is it able to receive spiritual rest.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The First Revelation, Chapter 5
Context: It needeth us to have knowing of the littleness of creatures and to hold as nought all-thing that is made, for to love and have God that is unmade. For this is the cause why we be not all in ease of heart and soul: that we seek here rest in those things that are so little, wherein is no rest, and know not our God that is All-mighty, All-wise, All-good. For He is the Very Rest. God willeth to be known, and it pleaseth Him that we rest in Him; for all that is beneath Him sufficeth not us. And this is the cause why that no soul is rested till it is made nought as to all things that are made. When it is willingly made nought, for love, to have Him that is all, then is it able to receive spiritual rest.

“It is useless to seek the soul of things beneath their surface, for their surface is their soul.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

“For the sword outwears its sheath,
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And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.”

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“The Quality, the aretê he has fought so hard for, has sacrificed for, has never betrayed, but in all that time has never once understood, now makes itself clear to him and his soul is at rest.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 30

“My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply do not believe it. What a soul may be is beyond my understanding.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

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“The authorities teach that next to the first emanation, which is the Son coming out of the Father, the angels are most like God. And it may well be true, for the soul at its highest is formed like God, but an angel gives a closer idea of Him. That is all an angel is: an idea of God. For this reason the angel was sent to the soul, so that the soul might be re-formed by it, to be the divine idea by which it was first conceived. Knowledge comes through likeness. And so because the soul may know everything, it is never at rest until it comes to the original idea, in which all things are one. And there it comes to rest in God.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

Sermon 9, as translated in The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (1999) by Hughes Oliphant Old, Ch. 9: The German Mystics, p. 449

“For all the gold that is beneath the moon,
Or ever has been, of these weary souls
Could never make a single one repose.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto VII, lines 64–66 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

“We may never come to full knowing of God till we know first clearly our own Soul.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 56
Variant: We can never come to full knowing of God till we know first clearly our own Soul.

“Our Soul may never have rest in things that are beneath itself.”

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