"What to I love when I love my God? Not physical beauty, fading charm, splendour of earthly light (so precious to our eyes), fair melodies of harmony and song, odours of flowers, incense, spices, manna or honey, a body we can embrace with physical delight. It is these things I love when I love my God. Yet, when I love him, I love a certain sort of light, and a voice, incense, food, embrace; but they are of the sort I love deep in my inner being, where my soul is steeped in a light no place can contain – listen to a voice that never fades away with time – breathes an incense no gust of wind can carry away – tastes a food that never runs out through being eaten – clutches an embrace that doesn't dissolve through desires fulfillment. That is what I love when I love my God.

But what is my God? I asked this question to the earth. It answered "I am not God". Everything on earth said the same. I asked the sea, the abysses of the deep, and the life-forms that creep in them, but they replied, "we are not your God. See what is above us". I spoke to the blowing wind; but the entire atmosphere and all that lives in it replied, "I am not God". Then I asked sky, sun, moon, stars; but they told me, "we are not the God you seek". I spoke to everything around me, all that my senses revealed to me, and I said, "seeing that you are not my God, tell me about him. Tell me something of my God!" In a loud clear voice they replied "God is the one who made us". I put these questions simply by looking on these things, and their beauty was the only answer they gave.

Augustine - Confessions – Ch. 10