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Faith is comparable to the feet by which one journeys to God, and love is like one's guide.

We are so ignorant that what we have read and been told has not sufficed to teach us to disregard wandering thoughts, therefore I shall not be wasting time in instructing and consoling you about these trials. However, this will help you but little until God chooses to enlighten you, and additional measures are needed: His Majesty wishes us to learn by ordinary means to understand ourselves and to recognize the share taken in these troubles by our wandering imagination, our nature, and the devil’s temptations, instead of laying all the blame on our souls.

We must have no confidence whatever our own strength, but trust in His mercy and until we do this all is weakness.

If God is in us, and if God is love, it is inevitable that we be brothers; because love of our neighbor is the measure of our love for God.

In this arid and obscure night the soul undergoes a thorough reform in its imperfections of avarice, in which it coveted various spiritual objects and was never content with any of its spiritual exercises.

He that seeks here any other thing than purely God and the salvation of his soul, will find nothing but trouble and sorrow.

We who run in the way of love shouldn't be thinking of sufferings that can take place in the future: it's a lack of confidence, it's like meddling in the work of creation.

By love and not by fear, does a soul avoid committing the least voluntary fault.

It is vital for individuals to make acts of love in this life so that in being perfected in a short time they may not be detained long, either here on earth or in the next life before seeing God.

When you speak with a Lord so great, you should think of Who it is you are addressing and what you yourself are, if only that you may speak to Him with proper respect. How can you address a king with the reverence he deserves unless you are clearly conscious of his position and yours?

There are not two doctrines of St. John of the Cross, one for religious and one for seculars; there is only one, which applies to all Christians indiscriminately and does not require a special state of life, but only a disposition of will, namely the disposition of not wanting to be confined to mediocrity and therefore of not refusing generous renunciation at every privation required for attaining a more intimate union with God.

Love can accomplish all things. Things that are ‘most impossible’ become very easy where love is at work.