“A good and pious man ought to be bitterly and greatly ashamed that suffering ever moved him, when we see how a merchant, for the sake of earning a little money, of which, too, he cannot be sure, will travel so far overland on arduous tracks, up a hill and down dale, across wilderness and oceans, risking robbery and assault on his person and his goods, going in great want of food and drink and sleep and suffering other hardships, and yet he is glad and willing to forget all this for the sake of his small and uncertain profit. A knight in a battle risks possessions and body and life for the sake of a transient and very fleeting honor; and yet we think such a great matter that we should suffer a little for God’s sake, who is everlasting blessedness.”
Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327) in Meister Eckhart Sermons ed. Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1981) 238.