Adrienne von Speyr Quotes

If there were just one possibility—either to do the good or to combat evil—man would have to opt for the first.

If there had been no Judas, Peter would be the great betrayer. It is only because he stands in the framework of a still greater betrayal that we find a thousand excuses for him and for the faults of the Church continuing and occurring over and over again.

Once a scientific question is settled, it remains interesting and alive only if it draws attention to new questions; every conclusion is meant as a transition to a new beginning.

There is already so much grace in a Christian body. Can you imagine how much grace there is in a soul?

When we sin, we think we are geniuses; when we confess, we know we are idiots.

The ability to suffer and the ability to love are one.

Whoever wants to love is better knowing nothing than too much.

The first step in learning to love others is the attempt to understand them.

Only faith can keep what hope promises.

When we make our own calculations, we need so many numbers and factors that any mistake is possible. The Lord's calculation boils down to love.

The Lord gives his whole innocent spirit to the Father and keeps only our own sinful spirit back for himself. In this way he can carry sin as if he himself had committed it.

[About Mozart] In relation to God he is like a child who brings everything to his father: the stones from the street and peculiar sticks and little plants and even once a ladybug; and with him all of these things are melodies, melodies that he brings to God, melodies that he suddenly knows when he is inside of prayer. And when he has finished praying, and he is no longer on his knees and no longer has his hands folded, then he sits there at the piano, or he sings with an incredible childlikeness, and in doing so he no longer has any idea whether he is playing something for God or whether it is God who is using him to play something at once for himself and for Mozart. There is a great conversation between Mozart and God that is the purest prayer, and this entire conversation is nothing but music.

The sins of others can never become the measure of your own.

There is an intensification of negative force at work in the apostate. He resembles a man who works swiftly and surely to erect a wall in order to make the Lord's image, which he knows exactly, disappear and become unrecognizable behind it.

[About Edith Stein] I see her groping, wonder-filled prayer, which in the beginning resembles a conversation she is conducting with herself and is very managed. It is half like a question she puts to herself without knowing exactly what she means; it may be that the step she takes does not need to be completed by her; the question does not need to be perfectly articulated; perhaps God would be able to intervene in the middle of her step, in order to make his presence known and answer her question in a much more profound way than she herself would have expected or even would have been capable of expecting. And God truly answers. She prays more and more and finally receives a victorious certainty and rejoices. From this moment of victorious certainty on, everything is perfectly simple and unambiguous. She will follow the path God shows to her; she belongs to him; she has rediscovered her childlike cheerfulness, which has increased and become clearly manifest through love and faith.