"How are you to meet the swarm of foolish attachments, trifling, and undesirable inclinations which beset you? By turning sharply away, and thoroughly renouncing such vanities, flying to the Savior’s Cross, and clasping His Crown of thorns to your heart, so that these little foxes may not spoil your vines." Source: St. Francis de [...]
"Today millions of men and women consider that their happiness is destroyed if they must get along without a few things of which their grandfathers had never dreamed. Luxuries have become necessities to them; and the more things a man needs in order to be happy, the more he has increased his chances of disappointment [...]
"Do not let that mind which is the likeness of God cleave to mere earthly goods; let it always be raised above them, not sunk in them." Source: St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Random House, Inc., 2002.
"I renounced, for the love of Him, everything that was not He; and I began to live as if there was none but He and I in the world." Source: Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God and The Spiritual Maxims
"I cannot understand how humility exists, or can exist, without love, or love without humility, and it is impossible for these two virtues to exist save where there is great detachment from all created things." Source: Saint Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, Dover Thrift Editions, 2012.