I, a miserable young man, supremely miserable even in
the very outset of my youth, had pleaded to You for chastity, and said,
'Grant me chastity and self-control, but not yet.' For I was afraid that you
would hear me soon, and soon deliver me from the disease of
concupiscence, which I desired to have satisfied rather than
extinguished....But You, O Lord, are good and merciful, and your right
hand had respect unto the profoundness of my death, and removed from
the bottom of my heart that abyss of corruption...How sweet did it
suddenly become to me to be without the delights of trifles! And what at
one time I feared to lose, it was now a joy to me to put away. For You
cast them away from me, You the true and highest sweetness. You cast
them away, and instead of them did enter in Yourself- sweeter than all
pleasure...Now was my soul free from the gnawing cares of seeking and

getting, and of wallowing and exciting the itch of lust. And I babbled unto
You my brightness, my riches, and my health, the Lord my God."
-Augustine

“What is it to love God with all the heart, and all the soul, and all the mind
and all the strength, other than to be entirely lost in, and consumed by, a
higher attraction, which makes us pass by everything else, and causes us
to know to find end to enjoy an object for our love, in which we lose
ourselves altogether?...It is to have longed and languished for what could
quiet the home-sickness of the heart, to have tried everything that could
be tried, and to have been disappointed with it all; and now, at length, to
have found the true, the perfect, the holy Object of the love of one’s
heart, to receive God Himself in the soul, and in this love to be supremely
happy.”
-Abraham Kuyper