If a man is moved to love God apart from any sweetness he feels, he is already focusing his love upon God, whom he does not feel. If he sets his will upon pleasurable and consoling feelings, thinking about them and resting in them, he is setting his will on creatures or related things, making them into an end instead of a means. That man would be very ignorant who thinks that because sweetness and delight are failing him, God is failing him, or should think that in having these he is having God. He would be still more ignorant if he followed God looking for sweetness, and rejoiced and rested in it when obtained. In this case his love is not set purely on God alone above all things, for clinging to and desiring what is created, his will cannot soar to God.
ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS Letter XI
