Meister Eckhart says,
Practice is better than precept;
but the practice and precept of eternal God is a counsel of perfection.
If I wanted a teacher of theology, I should go for one to Paris,
to its learned university.
However, if I came to ask about the perfect life,
why then he could not tell me.
Where then am I to turn?
To pure and abstract nature, nowhere else:
that can solve your anxious questions.
Why, good people, search among dead bones?
Why not seek the living part that is directly connected with creation and that gives eternal life?
The dead neither give nor take.
An angel seeking God as God would not anywhere for him except in a quiet, solitary creature.
The essence of perfection lies in bearing poverty, misery, scorn, adversity and every hardship that befalls, willingly, gladly, freely, eagerly, calm and unmoved and persisting until death without a why.
From: Eckhart Sayings