“They pass over themselves and all that is created, God and the Godhead, and they say that God is nothing and that they are nothing as well. Nothing is neither blissful nor damned, neither working nor idle, neither God nor creature, neither good nor evil. See, in this way they have forfeited their created being and have become nothing, just as, in their imagination, God is nothing. Heaven and earth and all that God has made have being and existence. These unbelievers say ‘We are nothing and our God is nothing.”
– Flemish mystic Jan van Ruusbroec (John of) in The Twelve Beguines
“In the most secret part of the understanding, the simple eye is ever open. It contemplates and gazes at the Light with a pure sight that is lit by the Light itself: eye to eye, mirror to mirror, image to image.”
– from A Mirror of Eternal Blessedness
“If every earthly pleasure were melted into a single experience and bestowed upon one man, it would be as nothing when measured by the joy of which I write.”
– from An Anthology of Mysticism and Philosophy, compiled by William Kingsland