John of St. Samson Quotes

When you have acquired this excellent habit of love you will feel completely absorbed by it as it penetrates deeply into the center of your being. There you will be conscious of enjoying a taste and a gaze of such height, breadth, length, depth and simplicity that you will attain this state quite easily, without any effort on your part. p. 120

Make use of this very simple aspiration: you and I, my love, you and I, you and I, and never another nor more! To which you could add some burning words like: "since you are entirely good and all goodness itself; since you are entirely glorious and all glory itself; since you are entirely holy and all holiness itself!

Simplicity is the loving inclination of the soul elevated by God, Who efficaciously drawn it into His own heart. There He reduces all its faculties to unity of spirit, that it may live there, in a n abstract, simple and essential condition, without sensible desire to reason or think of order or disorder. It is continually lost in the eternity of God.

This path is so delightful and delectable that anyone who knows it will lovingly travel it at his own cost and expense. Such happiness is beyond words.

The way to attain love is to love. A less excellent love leads to a greater love, and a greater love in turn leads to the highest love, as well as to the most excellent and ultimate fruits of active love. Each of these degrees has its own theory and practice. All of them, especially the last degrees, possess a simple, exalted, and singular contemplation of the divine Object, which constantly exerts a powerful influence on the soul and ravishes it with delight.

I beg everyone from the highest to the lowest to forgive me; I have given them all much very bad example.

When the soul has been deeply touched, it is by love alone that it desires to be intimately joined to God. This is why we advocate reducing ardent aspiration to a few words, even to the mere word ‘love’. This love sends forth ardent and fiery flames with all its strength. As a result. A blazing divine fire is enkindled in the soul. It is in this way that God stirs up the soul and draws it strongly inward. p. 86

The more a person strives after God, the more earnest he will become--the les he will converse with men.

In a word, frankly, I am in love with the love in my Spouse.

Tell me, my Life and my Spouse, this whole ineffable mystery, is it not rather for the admiration of the Seraphim, than for the expression of one like me, your spouse, who doesn’t know what to do about this, except to babble.

Love which is not humble is a devil.

God takes such great pleasure in the sanctity of His saints that in the interests of a few, He often allows the whole Church to suffer great loss.

Every soul, touched by God, feels and believes in the depths of its being that it is more sinful than all men together.

Sing boldly, O spouses of a Bridegroom such as mine! you, I say, whom are my companions in this fate and enjoyment so happy as ours! Sing at my happy insistence as I will sing by yours, a new song containing endless praises of the infinitely excessive grandeur and love of our Bridegroom, coming to so admirably espouse us, to deiformly deify us of him and in him, and to make us oneself of oneself.

The sight of the intuitive and ravishing Beauty of God holds her as if asleep in its delectable bosom...This state surpasses all human definition and comparison.