The example of the saints

Over the past twenty centuries, the Church has recognized many individual "saints", people highly devoted to loving God and loving neighbor.  These lives, because of the example they set, ought to be imitated by us.  Obviously, many of the details will be different due to culture, time and setting.  In other words, some of these men and women were monastics in different countries during a different century.
But there are still many things in which we can imitate them.  What are those things?  That is an answer we must determine for ourselves.  Another question in conjunction with this is that of our own goals and motivations.  What are we seeking and why?