cultivation

It is easier for feeble straw to resist a mighty fire than for the nature of sin to resist the power of love.  We must cultivate this love in our souls, that we may take our place with all the saints.  For through their love for their nieghbor, they were all pleasing to God.

As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit.

When your practice has led you to experiences that you can't understand, you need a better theory. Otherwise, if you try to understand these transcendent experiences with 'profane' or, we might say, 'materialistic' ways of thinking, your cultivation will be set back.

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering-pot and the pruning-knife.

I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses!  Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!