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O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.

Nevertheless, God usually imparts to those whom he brings into this night the humility and the readiness, even though they feel displeasure, to do what is commanded of them for his sake alone, and they become detached from many things because of this lack of gratification.

Conquering the tongue is better than fasting on bread and water.

For, as I have said, God now sees that they have grown a little, and are becoming strong enough to lay aside their swaddling clothes and be taken from the gentle breast; so He sets them down from His arms and teaches them to walk on their own feet; which they feel to be very strange, for everything seems to be going wrong with them.

Under the old law, the altar of sacrifice was to be hollow within. It is the will of God that the soul should be empty of all created things, and thus become a fitting altar for the King of heaven.

Not all the faculties and senses have to be employed in things, but only those which are required; as for the others leave them unoccupied for God.

He who falls alone remains alone in his fall, and he values his soul little since he entrusts it to himself alone.

As the bee draws honey from all plants and makes use of them only for that end, so the soul most easily draws the sweetness of love from all that happens to it. It makes all things subservient to the end of loving God, whether they are sweet or bitter.

For the spiritual and the sensual desires are put to sleep and mortified, so that they can experience nothing, either Divine or human; the affections of the soul are oppressed and constrained, so that they can neither move nor find support in anything; the imagination is bound and can make no useful reflection; the memory is gone; the understanding is in darkness, unable to understand anything; and hence the will likewise is arid and constrained and all the faculties are void and useless; and in addition to all this a thick and heavy cloud is upon the soul, keeping it in affliction, and, as it were, far away from God.

For these are souls who, instead of committing themselves to God and making use of His help, rather hinder God by the indiscretion of their actions or by their resistance; like children who, when their mothers desire to carry them in their arms, start stamping and crying, and insist upon being allowed to walk, with the result that they can make no progress; and, if they advance at all, it is only at the pace of a child.

When the spiritual man has been brought to nothing, when his humility is perfect, then will take place the union of the soul with God. This consists not in spiritual refreshment, sweetness and fine sentiments but in the living death of the cross.

Strive to keep your heart in peace, and let nothing that comes to pass in this world make you uneasy- for consider that it must all come to an end.