On Loving God (Volume 13) Quotes

“Rest is in Him alone. Man knows no peace in the world; but he has no disturbance when he is with God.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God

“The reason for loving God is God Himself. As to how He is to be loved, there is only one measure: It is immeasurable!”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God (Volume 13)

“In Him should all our affections center, so that in all things we should seek only to do His will, not to please ourselves.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God

“Righteousness is the natural and essential food of the soul, which can no more be satisfied by earthly treasures than the hunger of the body can be satisfied by air. If you should see a starving man standing with mouth open to the wind, inhaling draughts of air as if in hope of gratifying his hunger, you would think him lunatic. But it is no less foolish to imagine that the soul can be satisfied with worldly things which only inflate it without feeding it.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God

“[Quomodo stilla aquae modica, multo infusa vino, deficere a se tota videtur, dum et saporem vini induit, et colorem; et quomodo ferrum ignitum et candens, igni simillimum fit, pristina propriaque forma exutum; et quomodo solis luce perfusus aer in eamdem transformatur luminis claritatem, adeo ut non tam illuminatus, quam ipsum lumen esse videatur: sic omnem tunc in sanctis humanam affectionem quodam ineffabili modo necesse erit a semetipsa liquescere, atque in Dei penitus transfundi voluntatem.]
As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the color and savor of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red-hot, becomes like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be illuminated as to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God (Volume 13)

“And real happiness will come, not in gratifying our desires or in gaining transient pleasures, but in accomplishing God's will for us: even as we pray every day: "Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God

“To them that long for the presence of the living God, the thought of Him is sweetest itself: but there is no satiety, rather an ever-increasing appetite...”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God (Volume 13)

“He gives Himself as prize and reward: He is the refreshment of holy soul, the ransom of those in captivity.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God

“O wretched slaves of Mammon, you cannot glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ while you trust in treasures laid up on earth: you cannot taste and see how gracious the Lord is, while you are hungering for gold. If you have not rejoiced at the thought of His coming, that day will be indeed a day of wrath to you.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God

“It is natural for a man to desire what he reckons better than that which he has already, and be satisfied with nothing which lacks that special quality which he misses. Thus, if it is for her beauty that he loves his wife, he will cast longing eyes after a fairer woman. If he is clad in a rich garment, he will covet a costlier one; and no matter how rich he may be he will envy a man richer than himself. Do we not see people every day, endowed with vast estates, who keep on joining field to field, dreaming of wider boundaries for their lands? Those who dwell in palaces are ever adding house to house, continually building up and tearing down, remodeling and changing. Men in high places are driven by insatiable ambition to clutch at still greater prizes. And nowhere is there any final satisfaction, because nothing there can be defined as absolutely the best or highest. But it is natural that nothing should content a man's desires but the very best, as he reckons it. Is it not, then, mad folly always to be craving for things which can never quiet our longings, much less satisfy them? No matter how many such things one has, he is always lusting after what he has not; never at peace, he sighs for new possessions.”
― St. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God

“Ignorance is brutal, arrogance is devilish. Pride only, the chief of all iniquities, can make us treat gifts as if they were rightful attributes of our nature, and, while receiving benefits, rob our Benefactor of His due glory.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God

“O wretched slaves of Mammon, you cannot glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ while you trust in treasures laid up on earth: you cannot taste and see how gracious the Lord is, while you are hungering for gold.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God (Volume 13)

“We must know, then, what we are, and that it is not of ourselves that we are what we are. Unless we know this thoroughly, either we shall not glory at all, or our glorying will be vain. Finally, it is written, "If thou know not, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock" (Song of Solomon. 1:8). And this is right.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God

“They wear themselves out in vain travail, without reaching their blessed consummation, because they delight in creatures, not in the Creator.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God

“It is so that these impious ones wander in a circle, longing after something to gratify their yearnings, yet madly rejecting that which alone can bring them to their desired end, not by exhaustion but by attainment.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God

“In his greediness, he counts all that he has clutched as nothing in comparison with what is beyond his grasp, and loses all pleasure in his actual possessions by longing after what he has not, yet covets.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God

“children are not constrained by the first, yet they could not exist without the second: even as St. Paul writes, ‘Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father’ (Rom. 8.15). And again to show that that same righteous man was not under the law, he says: ‘To them that are under the law, I became as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law, as without law (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ)’ (I Cor. 9.20f). So it is rightly said, not that the righteous do not have a law, but, ‘The law is not made for a righteous man’, that is, it is not imposed on rebels but freely given to those willingly obedient, by Him whose goodness established it.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God - Enhanced Version

“Now the children have their law, even though it is written, ‘The law is not made for a righteous man’ (I Tim. 1.9). For it must be remembered that there is one law having to do with the spirit of servitude, given to fear, and another with the spirit of liberty, given in tenderness.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God - Enhanced Version