The new year has begun for us. / Now must God grant us with love / That we may be able so to begin it / That it may be of value for Love.

They who live without Love are dead. / But the worst of all deaths is this -- / That the loving soul be cowardly toward Love; / For perfect Love is never cowardly, / But claims its rights, which it lacks.

First the lover must learn charity and keep God's law. Then he shall be blessed a hundredfold, and he shall do great things without great effort, and bear all pain without suffering. And so his life will surpass human reason indeed.

Although the season is joyful everywhere, / And mountain and valley are all verdant, / That would seem a truly small matter to him / Who has met mischance in love.

The soul who is most untouched is the most like to God.

Nowadays this is the way everyone loves himself; people wish to live with God in consolations and repose, in wealth and power, and to share the fruition of his glory. We all indeed wish to be God with God, but God knows there are few of us who want to live as men with his Humanity, or want to carry his cross with him, or want to hang on the cross with him and pay humanity's debt to the full.

It is written in the code of love: He who strikes the blow is himself struck down.