Jakob Bohme Quotes

The heart in man signifieth the heat or the element of fire, and it is also the heat; for the heat in the whole body hath its original in the heart.

When we consider the beginning of our life, and compare the same with the eternal life, which we have in the promise, we cannot say nor find that we are at home in this life.

Men should friendly confer together, and offer one another their gifts and knowledge in love, and try things one with another, and hold that which is best, and not so stand in their own opinion as if they could not err.

You are at enmity with yourself.

A Cherubim or leader of a kingdom of angels is the fountain or heart of his whole kingdom, and is made out of all the powers out of which his angels are made, and is the most powerful and the brightest of them all.

The liver signifieth the element of water, and it is also the water; for from the liver cometh the blood in the whole body into all the members. The liver is the mother of the blood.

Just as a drop of water in the ocean cannot avail much; but if a great river runneth into it, that maketh a great commotion.

Love is higher than the Highest. Love is greater than the Greatest. Yea, it is in a certain sense greater than God; while yet, in the highest sense of all, God is Love, and Love is God. Love being the highest principle is the virtue of all virtues; from whence they flow forth.

Christ hath instituted Baptism as a bath, to wash away the anger, and hath put into us the Noble Stone, viz. the water of eternal life, for an earnest-penny, so that instantly in our childhood we might be able to escape the wrath.

A Christian is of no sect. He can dwell in the midst of sects, and appear in their services, without being attached or bound to any. He hath but one knowledge, and that is, Christ in him.

I contemplated man's little spark, what it should be valued before God alongside of this great work of heaven and earth.

The holy angels live and qualify in the light, in the good quality wherein the Holy Ghost reigneth. The devils live and reign in the fierce wrathful quality, in the quality of fierceness and wrath, destruction or perdition.

When in such sadness I earnestly elevated my spirit into God and locked my whole heart and mind along with all my thoughts and will therein, ceaselessly pressing in with God's Love and Mercy, and not to cease until he blessed me? then after some hard storms my spirit broke through hell's gates into the inmost birth of the Godhead, and there I was embraced with Love as a bridegroom embraces his dear bride.

Christianity . . . does not [simply] stand in the history that we only know and which knowledge we take to ourselves so that we say "Christ died for us and has broken death in us and made it into life. He has paid the debt for us. We need only to comfort ourselves with this and firmly believe that it has happened."

Since we in ourselves find that sin in the flesh is living, desirous and active, that it might work, the new birth out of Christ must be something else that does not work along with the sinful flesh and that does not will sin. . . .

Here a Christian is to consider why he calls himself a Christian and is truly to consider whether he is one. Because I may learn to know and understand that I am a sinner, and that Christ has killed my sins on the cross and shed His blood for me, this in no way makes a Christian out of me. The inheritance is only for the children. A maid in the house knows well what the wife would eagerly have. This does not therefore make her an inheritor of the wife's goods. The devil also knows that there is a God [James 2:19]. That does not therefore make him an angel again. However, if the maid in the household marries the wife's son, then she can truly come to the inheritance of the wife's goods. . . .

The scorner and the titular Christian is the whore's son, who must be cast out for he is not to inherit Christ's inheritance in the kingdom of God (Galatians 4:30). He is no use, and only Babel, a confusion of the on

As the science of every thing is in the formed Word, so also is God's will therein: That same expressed Word is in the angels, angelical; in the devils, diabolical; in man, human; in beasts, bestial.

All men who give up themselves in obedience unto God, they are received in Christ's obedience, viz. in the fulfilling of the obedience, the Jew and the Christian, and so likewise the heathen who has neither the law nor Gospel.

There is nothing in nature wherein there is not good and evil; everything moveth and liveth in this double impulse, working or operation, be it what it will.

If we incline our wills in true earnest singleness to God, then we go with Christ out of this world, out from the stars and elements, and enter into God; for in the will of reason we are children of the stars and elements, and the spirit of this world ruleth over us.

Time past, present, and to come, as also depth and height, near and afar off, are all one in God, one comprehensibility.

When thou art quiet and silent, then art thou as God was before nature and creature; thou art that which God then wats; thou art that whereof he made thy nature and creature: Then thou hearest and seest even with that wherewith God himself saw and heard in thee, before every thine own willing or thine own seeing began.

The sweet quality is set opposite to the bitter, and is a gracious, amiable, blessed and pleasant quality, a refreshing of the life, an allaying of the fierceness. It maketh all pleasant and friendly in every creature; it maketh the vegetables of the earth fragrant and of good taste, affording fair, yellow, white and ruddy colours.

The will leadeth us to God, or to the devil; it availeth not whether thou hast the name of a Christian; salvation doth not consist therein.

Very exceeding wonderful is the history concerning Abraham, for the kingdom of Christ is therein wholly represented.

A shepherd, in whom the spirit of God works, is more highly esteemed before God than the wisest and most potent in self-wit, without the divine dominion.

Open your eyes and the whole world is full of God.

God wills in man only that which is good, in the kingdom of his grace; where the free will yields itself up into the grace, there God wills that which is good in the will, through the grace.

We are all strings in the concert of God's joy.

If Love dwelt not in Trouble, it could have nothing to love. But its substance which it loves, namely the poor soul, being in trouble and pain, it hath thence cause to love this its own substance and to deliver it from pain, that so itself may by it be again beloved.

A Christian is Christ in the inward humanity; and a Jew is Christ in the figure, and in the office of his law, viz. according to nature.

All strife concerning Christ's testaments cometh hence that men do not understand that Heaven wherein Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. They understand not that he is in this World, and that the World standeth in Heaven, and Heaven in the World, and are in one another, as Day and Night.

The perfect state, the summum bonum, is Play. In play, life expresses itself in its fullness. God's life is play. Adam fell when his play became serious business .

The sour quality is set opposite to the bitter and the sweet, and is a good temper to all, a refreshing and cooling when the bitter and the sweet qualities are too much elevated or too preponderant.

He that serves God is resigned up into him, and in all things has respect to truth and righteousness, and will promote that.

Everything we see in nature is manifested truth; only we are not able to recognize it unless truth is manifest within ourselves.

In this light, my spirit saw through all things and into all creatures and I recognized God in grass and plants.

Adam was the image of God, he was man and woman, and yet neither of them before his Eve, but a masculine virgin in peculiar love, full of chastity and purity.

What kind of spiritual triumph it was I can neither write nor speak; it can only be compared with that where life is born in the midst of death, and is like the resurrection of the dead.

For God is himself the Being of all Beings, and we are as gods in him, through whom he revealeth himself.

In this world, with thy earthly life, thou art under heaven, stars, and elements, also under hell and devils; all ruleth in thee, and over thee.

The city Babel is the Ham-like man, who builds this city upon the earth; the tower is his self-chosen god, and divine worship. All reason-taught, from the school of this world, are the master-builders of this tower.