Bonaventure — on Wis 8:2 (Commentary on Wisdom, Chapter 8)

“(Vers. 2.). There follows: Her, namely wisdom, because she is of such great power, I loved, namely with the affection of the heart: whence above in the seventh chapter: "Beyond health and beauty I loved her." And I sought her out, that is, I sought outside myself, by the effect of good work, according to that passage of First John 3: "Let us not love in word nor in tongue, but in deed and in truth." From my youth, as if to say: in the flower of my age: Proverbs 8: "They who in the morning," namely of youth, "watch for me, shall find me": therefore Sirach 6: "Son, from your youth receive instruction." And I sought, namely by the zeal of reading and prayer: Luke 11: "Seek, and you shall find": to take her to myself as a bride. He says bride by reason of love: Proverbs 7: "Say to wisdom: You are my sister, and call prudence your friend." Likewise, by reason of delight: Proverbs 5: "Rejoice with the wife of your youth." By reason of inseparability: Matthew 19: "For it is not lawful to dismiss a bride except for the cause of fornication": but this has no place in wisdom: "for nothing defiled enters into her," above in the seventh chapter. By reason of generation: Sirach 24: "Come over to me, all you who desire me, and be filled from my generations." And I became a lover of her form, that is, of the beauty of wisdom, and this by perseverance and the love of fervent affection, converting it as it were into a habit: Zechariah 9: "What is his good and what is his beauty but the grain of the elect and the wine that makes virgins to bud forth"? that is, but wisdom, which restores the affection and makes chaste or purifies the intellect from the corruption of error.”