Love Quote by Richard Rolle

Rolle makes devotion sound less like a gush of feeling and more like a disciplined craft. "It behoves thee" carries the blunt pressure of obligation: love isn’t optional, it’s demanded. But he immediately complicates that demand with a qualifier modern readers might miss. You must love God wisely - and you can’t do that unless you already are wise. The line forms a tight loop, almost a spiritual catch-22, that reveals Rolle’s real target: unthinking piety. He’s not praising intensity; he’s warning against the kind of religious fervor that mistakes heat for truth.

The phrasing also exposes a medieval psychology in which love is not merely emotion but a moral and intellectual act. To love "wisely" is to love in right order: with discernment, humility, and a trained attention that doesn’t collapse into superstition or self-indulgent ecstasy. Rolle, a 14th-century English mystic, wrote for a culture saturated with devotion but also riddled with anxiety about spiritual error. Heresy trials, vernacular religion, and competing claims to revelation made "wisdom" a safeguard. The sentence quietly asserts authority: authentic love of God requires formation, not just enthusiasm.

Subtextually, Rolle is staking out a middle path between cold scholasticism and reckless zeal. He wants a love that is intelligent enough to resist fantasy, and wise enough to avoid turning God into a mirror for your own desires. In a single line, he makes devotion accountable.