The motto of St. Bruno are these words of the Psalmist. “My eyes prevented the watches: I was troubled, and I spoke not. I had in my mind the eternal years. Lo! I have gone far off, flying away, and I abode in the wilderness.” This constant meditation on eternity often broke his rest, and made sleep to flee from his eyes; this animated him with fervour in his retirement, and perpetual penance, and made him watch whole nights in sighs and tears to implore the divine mercy. In this solitude his employment was sometimes to pour forth his soul in songs of praise, and to entertain himself on the sweet motives of the divine love; sometimes the remembrance of eternal joys comforted his soul, and gave him already a kind of foretaste of them; and he often considered the terrors of the divine judgments, and the eternal torments prepared for sinners, being strongly affected with the dread of that which is of all others the most grievous, the pain of loss, or the everlasting privation of God. In a feeling meditation on this subject, he puts the following words in the mouth of a damned soul: “Add new tortures to the racks which I endure: may a million of fresh executioners tear me for all eternity, provided I be not totally deprived of my God. The most piercing flames will be to me soft roses; the fury of devils agreeable embraces; the horrible shrieks of those dungeons a pleasant harmony; these frightful prisons delightful palaces, could I but be freed from what I feel by the loss of God.” (Fr. Alban Butler, “Lives of the Saints”)