A good meditation, even when it is interrupted by occasional nodding, is much more beneficial than many outward religious exercises.
Johannes Tauler

As a good wine must be kept in a good cask, so a wholesome body is the proper foundation for a well-appointed inner ground.
Johannes Tauler

Because in the school of the Spirit man learns wisdom through humility, knowledge by forgetting, how to speak by silence, how to live by dying.
Johannes Tauler

Commemoration of Katherine of Alexandria, Martyr, 4th century If ye keep watch over your hearts, and listen for the Voice of God and learn of Him, in one short hour ye can learn more from Him than ye could learn from Man in a thousand years.
Johannes Tauler

Every one should find some suitable time, day or night, to sink into his depths, each according to his own fashion. Not every one is able to engage in contemplative prayer.
Johannes Tauler

Give yourself entirely to God, enter and hide in the hidden ground of your soul.
Johannes Tauler

God in His wisdom has decided that He will reward no works but His own.
Johannes Tauler

God touches and moves, warns and desires all equally, and He wants one quite as much as another. The inequality lies in the way in which His touch, His warnings, and His gifts are received.
Johannes Tauler

If we really want to achieve true prayer, we must turn our backs upon everything temporal, everything external, everything that is not divine.
Johannes Tauler

If you fall seventy times a day, rise seventy times and return to God so that you will not fall too often.
Johannes Tauler


In prayerful silence you must look into your own heart. No one can tell you better than yourself what comes between you and God. Ask yourself. Then listen!
Johannes Tauler

In the kingdom of heaven it is His work that will be crowned, not yours. Anything in you that He has not wrought Himself will count for nothing.
Johannes Tauler

In the most intimate, hidden and innermost ground of the soul, God is always essentially, actively, and substantially present. Here the soul possesses everything by grace which God possesses by nature.
Johannes Tauler

Judge yourself; if you do that you will not be judged by God, as St. Paul says. But it must be a real sense of your own sinfulness, not an artificial humility.
Johannes Tauler

Let God and all his creation teach you what your sins are.
Johannes Tauler

Like blind hens, we are ignorant of our own self and the depths within us.
Johannes Tauler

Man must do his part and detach himself from created things.
Johannes Tauler

Never believe that true prayer consists in mere babbling, reciting so many psalms and vigils, saying your beads while you allow your thoughts to roam.
Johannes Tauler

Often when He comes, He finds the soul occupied. Other guests are there, and He has to turn away. He cannot gain entry, for we love and desire other things; therefore, His gifts, which He is offering to everyone unceasingly, must remain outside.
Johannes Tauler

Rid yourself of anything that is not directed toward God.
Johannes Tauler