It is astonishing, says Pope St. Gregory, that we who are so unmortified presume to aspire to contemplation. We are full of ourselves and we would be filled with God! We exercise no restraint over either our body or our heart; we grant our senses all that they ask; we gratify our eyes with curious objects, our mind with innumerable vanities; we spend our time in vain and idle conversations; we give ourselves up to dissipation of heart every day, and we think we can establish ourselves in recollection at once and when we will. This is impossible.  – – St Francis de Sales ‘The Secret of Sanctity’.

St Francis de Sales