A soul cannot live without loving. It must have something to love, for it was created to love.
St. Catherine of SienaMerit consists in the virtue of love alone, flavored with the light of true discretion without which the soul is worth nothing.
St. Catherine of SienaWe were enclosed, O eternal Father, within the garden of your breast. You drew us out of your holy mind like a flower petaled with our soul's three powers and into each power you put the whole plant, so that they might bear fruit in your garden, might come back to you with the fruit you gave them. And you would come back to the soul, to fill her with your blessedness. There the soul dwells like the fish in the sea and the sea in the fish.
St. Catherine of Siena