The Eternal Woman Quotes

“To be a mother, to feel maternally, means to turn especially to the helpless, to incline lovingly and helpfully toward everything on earth that is small and weak. Therefore the principle of motherhood is a dual one. It hinges not only on the birth of the child, but also on fostering and protecting that which has been born.”
― Gertrud von le Fort, The Eternal Woman: The Timeless Meaning of the Feminine

“If the sign of the woman is "Be it done unto me," which means readiness to conceive or, when expressed in religious terms, the will to be blessed, then there is always distress when the woman no longer wills to conceive, no longer wills to be blessed. (This does not only apply in the biological sense).”
― Gertrud von le Fort, The Eternal Woman: The Timeless Meaning of the Feminine

“It is only the city dweller spending his weekends in the country who goes into raptures about nature; the farmer breathes in it. It is only the uncreative critic who is given to much talking about art. For the artist himself, his art is speech sufficient. It is only a motherless time that cries out for a mother, and a deeply unmotherly age that can point to the mother as a demand of the time, for it is precisely the mother who is timeless, the same in all epochs and among all peoples.”
― Gertrud von le Fort, The Eternal Woman: The Timeless Meaning of the Feminine

“her body is not taken from the dust of the earth but from the flesh of a human person; she is exalted by being called “the mother of life”; she is the one whose reproductive organs are “veiled”—and the veil not only symbolizes the sacredness of her task as life bearer, but also hints at the fact that a female womb would, one blessed day, be a tabernacle inhabited by the Holy one, the savior of the world, who would have a human mother but no earthly father.”
― Gertrud von le Fort, The Eternal Woman: The Timeless Meaning of the Feminine

“The realisation that there is no right on the part of the woman to a child, but only the right of the child to a mother, corresponds to the acceptance of another fact that becomes evident for women today, namely, that there is in the world no woman's right, so called, to a profession or vocation; but the world has a child's right to the woman.”
― Gertrud von le Fort, The Eternal Woman: The Timeless Meaning of the Feminine

“Nature can be wild, but she is never wilful; she may rear up with pain, but never with pride. Even in savagery, even in pain, nature fulfils the law of the Creator. The spirit, however, must still be conquered by Him. The motherly woman who surrenders to the forces of nature even as far as accepting death in order to give life to her child, by this very surrender, by this complete submersion in nature, portrays a part of humility that nature possesses. The mother, in giving life to the child, gives with it the prerequisite of redemption. Again, nature is the essential foundation of grace,”
― Gertrud von le Fort, The Eternal Woman: The Timeless Meaning of the Feminine

“Surrender to God is the only absolute power that the creature possesses. Only the handmaid of the Lord is the Queen of Heaven.”
― Gertrud von le Fort, The Eternal Woman: The Timeless Meaning of the Feminine

“Into this threefold prayer the praying woman includes the mysteries of her own motherhood, that through the mystery of the Mother of all mothers they may be uplifted. The earthly mother also has received her child from God; as his gift she has carried it and given it birth. Like Mary, she has presented it to God in the temple, and like her she has found it again in the temple.”
― Gertrud von le Fort, The Eternal Woman: The Timeless Meaning of the Feminine

“And yet, the real and deepest danger to woman did not lie along this line of refusal, but in the opposite direction. The veil is not only the symbol of the bride of man, but also of the Bride of Christ.”
― Gertrud von le Fort, The Eternal Woman: The Timeless Meaning of the Feminine

“The religious element, as said before, does not mean the divine, but it denotes reverence for the divine, and therefore, first of all, humility. The modern world withdraws in terror from this virtue as from the epitome of all that is unworthy. This is a misconception. The opposite of humility is not dignity but pride, which is an exaggeration of the true dignity of a man and therefore leads back toward that which is unworthy of him. Humility, on the contrary, is the innate dignity of man in the presence of God.”
― Gertrud von le Fort, The Eternal Woman: The Timeless Meaning of the Feminine

“For his redemption, man has nothing to contribute to God other than the readiness of unconditional surrender. The passive acceptance inherent in woman, which ancient philosophy regarded as purely negative, appears in the Christian order of grace as the positively decisive factor. The Marian dogma, reduced to a brief formula, denotes the doctrine of the cooperation of the creature in the work of redemption.”
― Gertrud von le Fort, The Eternal Woman: The Timeless Meaning of the Feminine