A man keeps his soul undefiled before God if he compels his mind to meditate only on God and His supreme goodness, makes his thought a true interpreter and exponent of this goodness, and teaches his senses to form holy images of the visible world and all the things in it, and to convey to the soul the magnificence of the inner principles lying within all things.
~St Maximos the Confessor
An all-embracing and intense longing for God binds those who experience it both to God and to one another….
Love alone harmoniously joins all created things with God and with each other.
~St Thalassios the Libyan
