Your best servant is the person who does not attend so much to hearing what he himself wants as to willing what he has heard from you.

The true servants of God are not solicitous that He should order them to do what they desire to do, but that they may desire to do what He orders them to do.

I long to learn the things that are, and comprehend their nature, and know God. This is, I said, what I desire to hear.

I long to learn the things that are, and comprehend their nature, and know God. This is, I said, what I desire to hear. ~ Hermes Trismegistus.

God is more pleased by one work, however small, done secretly, without desire that it be known, than a thousand done with the desire that people know of them. Those who work for God with purest love not only care nothing about whether others see their works, but do not even seek that God himself know of them. Such persons would not cease to render God the same services, with the same joy and purity of love, even if God were never to know of these.

Preserve a loving attentiveness to God with no desire to feel or understand any particular thing concerning God.

Do we have the right now to tell them that when Saint Francis begged the Lord to teach him to want to console instead of seeking to be consoled — to teach him to want to love instead of desiring to be loved — that he was really being selfish? Because he knew the only way to be fulfilled and pleased and happy was to give instead of trying to get.

The saints that be in Heaven, they will to know nothing but that which our Lord willeth to shew them: and also their charity and their desire is ruled after the will of our Lord: and thus ought we to will, like to them. Then shall we nothing will nor desire but the will of our Lord, as they do: for we are all one in God's seeing.

So we are told to love. We are told to listen. We are told to look. But a lot of the time we don’t because we choose damn well not to, and because only a saint could do it all the time, I think. You have to choose who to listen to because if you listen to everybody and you look at everybody — seeing every face the way Rembrandt saw that woman’s face — how could you make it down half a city block? You couldn’t. If you listened to what everybody says to you, how could you survive a day? But we can do more than we do — more than we do, surely we could do that.

According to our view a servant of God is not one who detaches himself from the world, lest he be a burden to it, and it to him; or hates life, which is one of God's bounties granted to him.

The main condition is that the spiritual ear should be open to overhear and patiently take in, and the will ready to obey that testimony which, I believe, God bears in every human heart, however dull, to those great truths which the Bible reveals. This, and not logic, is the way to grow in religious knowledge, to know that the truths of religion are not shadows, but deep realities.

As St Denys says: they speak most beautifully of God who can maintain the deepest silence concerning him in the fullness of their inner wealth.21

...a true seeker...should be content with little, and be freed from all inordinate desire. He should treasure the companionship of those that have renounced the world, and regard avoidance of boastful and worldly people a precious benefit. At the dawn of every day he should commune with God, and with all his soul persevere in the quest of his Beloved. He should consume every wayward thought with the flame of His loving mention, and, with the swiftness of lightning, pass by all else save Him.

What I’ve got to talk about, I don’t think a priest wants to hear. What does a priest know or care about secular concerns? All they want to talk about is God. All they want to hear is a tidy list of sins so that they can prescribe their penances and get on to the next customer.