I believe that you, more than anyone, can understand that there exists in my soul an insatiable thirst for happiness. I don't know why, but I find this has doubled. From the time I was a little girl, I've been searching for it but in vain, because everywhere I discover only the shadow of happiness. Can that satisfy me? No. I've never allowed myself to be seduced by it. I long to love, but that something I love doesn't change and is not a plaything of my passions or of circumstances of time and life. To love, yes, but an unchangeable Being, God, who has loved me infinitely from eternity. What an abyss there is between that pure, disinterested and immutable love, and the love a man can offer me! How can I love a being so filled with misery and weakness? What security can I find in that kind of a heart? To unite myself with another being who can not perfect me with his love, do you think this holds noble prospects for me? No. In God I find everything that I don't find in creatures, because they're too small to satisfy the almost infinite aspirations of my soul. Yet you'll say to me: but you can love God by living in the midst of your own family. No, my dear Lucho, Our Lord reserved nothing for Himself when He loved me from the wood of His cross. He even left His heaven. His divinity was eclipsed, and now should I give myself by halves? Would you think it generous of me to keep for myself those to whom I'm most bound? What kind of offering would I be making to Him then? No, dear Lucho, the love I have is above every created thing; and even though my own heart be trampled under foot, and torn to bits with pain, I won't fail to say my goodbyes, because I love Him madly. If a man is capable of making a woman fall in love with him to the point that she leaves everything, do you not believe, that God is capable of making His call irresistible to me?
St. Teresa of Jesus of the Andes from a letter to her brother Lucho