“In loving you, what do I love?”

In loving you, what do I love? No physical beauty, no temporal glory, no radiancy of light that commends itself to these eyes of mine; no sweet melody of songs tuned to every mode, no soft scent of flowers or of ointment or of perfumes, no manna, no honey, no limbs that can receive corporal embrace; yet I do love some kind of light, some kind of voice, some kind of fragrance, some kind of food, some kind of embrace, when I love my God, who is light, voice, fragrance, food, embrace to my inner man. There it is that a light shines on my soul that no place can contain, a sound is uttered no time can take away, a fragrance cast that no breath of wind can disperse, a savor given forth that eating cannot blunt, and there clings to me that which cannot be torn away by satiety. This is what I love in loving my God.

St. Augustine, Confessions (10.6.8)