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They are too attached to their honor. . . . These souls, for the most part, grieve over anything said against them. They do not embrace the cross but drag it along, and so it hurts and wearies them and breaks them to pieces. However, if the cross is loved, it is easy to bear, this is certain.

Perseverance through all misfortunes confers strength and courage on it (the soul). The painful purification from all sensible desires and pleasures leads it to freedom of spirit in which the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit mature.

I love Him with His own love. It is a double current between He who is and she who is not!

God communicates Himself to the soul in this interior union with a love so intense that the love of a mother who tenderly caresses her child, the love of a brother or the affection of a friend bears no resemblance to it.

Yes, it is true, God can make you a contemplative -- through His goodness and mercy; but, in my opinion, one should always take the lowest place, for this is what the Lord told us to do and taught us in deed. Prepare yourself so that God may lead you along this path if He so desires. When He doesn't, you can practice humility, which is to consider yourself lucky to serve the servants of the Lord and praise His Majesty because He brought you among them.

No one can make me frightened anymore, because I know what to believe about His mercy and His love; I know that, in the twinkling of an eye, all those thousands of sins would be consumed as a drop of water cast into a blazing fire.

My life is but an instant, an hour that passes by; a single day that slips my grasp and quickly slides away. O well you know, my dearest God, to love you I only have today.

In our spiritual life, whether there is a fog or a thunderstorm, or conversely a very gentle light, we are always dependent on god's mercy. once it has caught hold of us, it will never let us go.

I desire neither death nor life. Were Our Lord to offer me my choice, I would not choose. I only will what He wills, and I am pleased with whatever He does. I have no fear of the last struggle, or of any pain, however great, which my illness may bring. God has always been my help; He has led me by the hand since I was a child and I count on Him now. Even though suffering should reach its furthest limits I am certain He will never forsake me.

There You will show me
What my soul has been seeking,
And then You will give me,
You, my Life, will give me there
What You gave me on that other day:

The breathing of the air,
The song of the sweet nightingale,
The grove and its living beauty
In the serene night,
With a flame that is consuming and painless.

If the greatest sinner on earth should repent at the moment of death, and draw his last breath in an act of love, neither the many graces he had abused, nor the many sins he had committed, would stand in his way. Our Lord would see nothing, count nothing, but the sinner's last prayer, and without delay He would receive him into the arms of His mercy. But to make Him thus blind and incapable of reckoning the number of our sins, we must approach Him through His Heart - on that side He is defenseless.

I am not disturbed at seeing myself weakness itself. On the contrary it is in my weakness that I glory, and I expect each day to discover new imperfections in myself.