Quotes & Themes – Love
Love
Do much for God, and do nothing without love: refer everything to this love; eat and drink with it in mind. (Letter to Madame de Chantal)
How happy we are when we want to love Our Lord! Let’s really love Him, my daughter, and let’s not start examining in detail what we are doing for love of Him, as long as we know that we never want to do anything except for love of Him. (Letter to Madame de Chantal)
Between death and love there is no alternative. (Letters to Persons in Religion, VI, 24)
Love and death are so mingled in the Passion of Our Lord that we cannot have the one in our heart without the other. (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 12, Chapter 13)
All is love’s, and in love, for love, in holy Church. (Treatise on the Love of God, Preface)
Hatred separates us, and love brings us into one. (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 1, Chapter 9)
To love according to the spirit is to love according to the spirit; to live according to the flesh is to love according to the flesh; for love is the life of the soul as the soul is the life of the body. (Letters to Persons in Religion, III, 47)
Love is the movement, effusion and advancement of the heart toward the good. (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 1, Chapter 7)
The affinity which causes love does not always consist in resemblance, but in the mutual relation between the lover and the thing loved. (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 1, Chapter 8)
The union to which love aspires is spiritual. (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 1, Chapter 10)
Love not finding us equal, equalizes us, not finding us united, unites us. (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 1, Chapter 13)
The end of love is no other thing than the union of the lover and the thing loved. (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 1, Chapter 9).
We cannot help conforming ourselves to what we love. (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 8, Chapter 1)
All is subject to heavenly love, who will either be king or nothing. (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 1, Chapter 6)
Love is like fire, which is of clearer and fairer flame as its matter is more delicate. (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 1, Chapter 10)
Love is bittersweet, and while we live in this world it never has a sweetness perfectly sweet, because it is not perfect, nor ever purely satisfied. (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 6, Chapter 13)
Love either takes away the hardship of labor or makes it dear to us while we feel it. (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 9, Chapter 2)
The Holy Ghost teaches that the lips of the Spouse, that is the Church, resemble scarlet and the dropping honeycomb, to let everyone know that all the doctrine which she announces consists in sacred love. (Treatise on the Love of God, Preface)
Love is the abridgment of all theology. (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 8, Chapter 1)
During this mortal life we must choose eternal love or eternal death, there is no middle choice. (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 9, Chapter 13)
North American Salesian Network
The North American Salesian Network (NASN) is an organization of both lay and religious groups that live the Salesian teachings of St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal. NASN facilitates the sharing of Salesian resources, educational services, vocational efforts, and a variety of resources, bringing this optimistic, joy-filled spirituality to people throughout the world.