7 h 5 minAudiobook13 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the path to inner peace begins with an honest look at your own pride?
In The Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis asks what it means to follow Christ rather than simply know about him. This handbook for the inner life offers short counsels on humility, speech, temptation, silence and prayer. Its concern is practical: how faith shapes daily habits, especially when desires grow strong or suffering makes trust difficult.
The book moves from humility and learning toward the quiet inner life and the way of the cross. A long dialogue between Christ and the disciple explores grace, while the final book meditates on the Lord’s Supper. Throughout, Thomas directs attention away from display and debate, toward restraint, prayer and honest knowledge of oneself.
What you’ll discover
- Humility without display Explore Thomas’s call to see yourself honestly rather than build your life around pride.
- A quieter inner life Consider how silence and solitude support the inward life this book asks readers to cultivate.
- Faith in daily habits Reflect on counsels about speech, learning and desires that grow too powerful.
- Christ and the disciple Follow a sustained dialogue about grace, with room for the difficulty of the spiritual path.
- Prayer and the sacrament Encounter a devotional meditation on the Eucharist, the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper.
Who will love it
For readers who love reflective guides to humility, restraint and prayer, especially those from Christian traditions, and anyone drawn to self-knowledge, inner quiet and practical faith.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Follow Christ instead of collecting knowledge
- Humility begins with knowing yourself honestly
- Read Scripture for truth, not for show
- Guard your passions and keep a quiet tongue
- Solitude, death and honest daily renewal
- The inner life is a room with Christ in it
- Take up the cross and trust the hard road
- Christ speaks to the disciple about grace
- The sacrament, the author, and the book's long life
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- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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L’Imitazione di Cristo
by Tommaso da Kempis · 1420
Thomas à Kempis invites you into a quiet inner room to explore humility, prayer and what it means to follow Christ.
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In short
The Imitation of Christ is a handbook for the inner life. It was written in Latin in the early fifteenth century by Thomas à Kempis, a priest and monk who spent most of his long life in a house of Augustinian canons in the Netherlands.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Follow Christ instead of collecting knowledge
The book opens with a verse from the Gospel of John, in which Jesus says that whoever follows him does not walk in darkness. Thomas takes this as his starting point. To follow Christ, he says, means copying his life, not just admiring his words. A person can know many teachings and still not live by any of them.
This leads to the first big claim of Book One. Thomas does not despise learning, but he doubts that learning alone makes anyone better. A scholar can argue neatly about the Trinity and still be proud and unkind. A plain person with a humble heart may please God far more. The test is not how much you know but how you live.
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What is The Imitation of Christ about?
It is a guide to the spiritual life in four books. It teaches humility, self-knowledge, inner quiet, patience in suffering and trust in God, and it ends with a meditation on communion. Its aim is to help readers live as Christ lived.
Who wrote The Imitation of Christ and when?
It is traditionally credited to Thomas à Kempis, a monk in the Netherlands, and was written in Latin in the early fifteenth century. It first circulated without a name, and other authors were once suggested, but most scholars now accept Thomas.
Is The Imitation of Christ hard to read?
No. Its chapters are short and its sentences simple. Most readers take it a chapter at a time and return to it often.
The author
Thomas à Kempis
1379–1471 · German Christian devotional writer
Thomas à Kempis was a German canon regular born in Kempen in the late fourteenth century. He lived at the monastery of Mount Saint Agnes near Zwolle, in what is now the Netherlands, and died in 1471. He wrote religious works and is traditionally credited with writing The Imitation of Christ.
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