Saint Teresa of Avila

"The important thing is not to think much, but to love much: Do, then, whatever most arouses you to love. Perhaps we do not know what love is: It would not suprise me a great deal to learn this. For love consists, not in the extent of our happiness, but in the extent of our determination to try to please god in everything and to endeaver, in all possible ways, not to offend him".

"As I write this, the noises in my head are so loud that I am beginning to wonder what is going on in it. As I said at the outset, They have been making it almost impossible for me to obey those who commanded me to write. My head sounds just as if it were full of brimming rivers, and then as if all the water in those rivers came suddenly rushing downward: and a host of little birds seem to be whistling, not in the ears, but in the upper part of the head".