The contemplative in the world is in a better position [than contemplatives in the cloister or than active souls in the world] to have a presentiment that what temptation [when not given in to] aims at operating in us is not so much a destruction as a transfiguration, less an annihilation of something in us than a transference – through death – to a higher life, where it becomes worthy to be offered to God and to unite with him.
Jacques Maritain (1882–1973)