Richard Rolle

“The joy of the righteous is from within, and from God.”

“To love God is the greatest of virtues; to be despised by the world is the greatest of joys.”

“What is love but a transforming of the delight into the thing loved?”

“In the first degree of love, a person is purified and made clean.”

“True charity is to be aflame with the fire of love, and to be ready to speak of God.”

“Love is a life, joining together the loving and the loved.”

“The more a man loves, the more he longs for what he loves.”

“For a contemplative life has two parts: a lower and a higher. The lower part is in reading and prayer and good thought. The higher part is in beholding and loving God only.”

“He who truly loves God, values nothing but God or for God's sake.”

“A soul that is burning with the fire of love, finds nothing hard, nothing bitter.”

“Can I not sing with the angels, I who have been joined to the Creator of angels?”

“My soul is melted in me when my beloved speaks to me.”

“Song, I say, is the brightness of the eternal praise, and the bliss of the angel's melody.”

“He that loves God truly, is not overcome by sloth, or vainglory, or any other vice.”

“The soul that is in the third degree of love sings the songs of love.”

“All my life I have desired to be filled with the joy of God's love.”