Richard Rolle (1300 – 1349) was an English hermit, mystic, and religious writer. He studied at the University of Oxford, but left before receiving a degree to become a hermit. His numerous works, which were widely read in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, are often classified into commentaries, treatises and epistles. An account of his mystical experiences are provided in one of his best-known works, Incendium Amoris (The Fire of Love).
Quotes by Richard Rolle…
Those for whom the world smells only of matter, smell themselves only; those that see nothing but passing phenomena, see themselves and no deeper. Not in contemplation of the stars that wheel across the sky shall we discover Thee, O God, Thou who didst enrich with madness Don Quixote! The discovery comes by watching, from the depths of our hearts, the soaring of love’s aspirations. Love is the fairest and most profitable guest that a reasonable creature can entertain. To God it is the most acceptable and pleasing of all things. Not only does it comfort the spirit with sweetness and wisdom, and make her one with God, but it doth so constrain flesh and blood that a man slip never into the snare of trivial beguilements. In the light and warmth of love our life grows strong and comely; a better dwelling, nor a sweeter, never I found.
