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A love of pleasure, and attachment to it, usually fires the will toward enjoyment of things that give pleasure. A more intense enkindling of another, better love (love of the soul's Bridegroom) is necessary for the vanquishing of the appetites and the denial of this pleasure. By finding satisfaction and strength in this love, it will have the courage and constancy to readily deny all other appetites.

Take God for your spouse and friend and walk with him continually, and you will not sin and will learn to love, and the things you must do will work out prosperously for you.

If individuals resolutely submit to carrying the cross, if they decidedly want to find and endure trial in all things for God, they will discover in all of them great relief and sweetness.

Do not refuse work even though it seems that you cannot do it. Let all find compassion in you.

The people of Israel did not find the manna sweet above all else, although it was so in fact, because they would not limit their desires to it alone. The sweetness and nourishment of the manna was not perceived by them, not because it was lacking, but because they longed for other foods beside it.

Since this flame is a flame of divine life, it wounds the soul with the tenderness of God's life, and it wounds and stirs it so deeply as to make it dissolve in love. What the bride affirmed in the Song of Songs is fulfilled in the soul. She was so moved that her soul melted, and so she says: As soon as he spoke my soul melted [Sg. 5:6]. For God's speech is the effect he produces in the soul.

We must dig deeply in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many pockets containing treasures: however deep we dig we will never find their end or their limit. Indeed, in every pocket new seams of fresh riches are discovered on all sides.

It is greatly to be lamented that, when God has granted them strength to break other and stouter cords-- namely, affections for sins and vanities -- they should fail to attain to such blessing because they have not shaken off some childish thing which God had bidden them conquer for love of Him, and which is nothing more than a thread or a hair.

God takes care of the affairs of those who truly love Him without their having to be anxious about them.

Since a double measure of bitterness must follow the doing of your own will, do not do it even though you remain in single bitterness.

This knowledge, when purer, is even at times the cause of darkness because it dispossesses the intellect of its customary lights, forms, and phantasies and effects a noticeable darkness.

Feed not your spirit on anything but God. Cast off concern about things, and bear peace and recollection in your heart.