"They who discouraged the Isrealites from going into the land of promise told them it was a country that devoured it's inhabitants; or, in other words, that it was impossible to withstand the pestilential infection of its air; and, further, that the natives were such monsters that they devoured men like locusts. It is in this manner that the world defames holy devotion, representing devout persons as a peevish, gloomy and sullen race of men, pretending that devotion begets melancholy and insupportable humors. But as Josue and Caleb protested that the promised land was not only good and fair, but also that the possession of it would be sweet and agreeable, so the Holy Ghost, by the mouths of all the saints, and Our Savior by His own, assure us that the devout life is a life of all others, the most sweet, happy and amiable...
"... O worldlings! devout souls, it is true, find much bitterness in their exercises of mortification; but in performing them, they convert them into the most delicious sweetness... If, then, devotion can confer a sweetness on the most cruel torments, what can it not do for virtuous actions?"
- St. Francis De Sales, "Introduction to the Devout Life"
