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I consider myself as the most wretched of men, full of sores and corruption, and who has committed all sorts of crimes against his King; touched with a sensible regret I confess to Him all my wickedness, I ask His forgiveness, I abandon myself in His hands, that He may do what He pleases with me. This King, full of mercy and goodness, very far from chastising me, embraces me with love, makes me eat at His table, serves me with His own hands, gives me the key of His treasures; He converses and delights Himself with me incessantly, in a thousand and a thousand ways, and treats me in all respects as His favorite. It is thus I consider myself from time to time in His holy presence.

In contemplation God teaches the soul very quietly and secretly, without its knowing how, without the sound of words, and without the help of any bodily or spiritual faculty, in silence and quietude, in darkness to all sensory and natural things.

Believe me – to write books of piety, to compose sublime poems, all this is not worth as much as the smallest act of renunciation.

Secrecy of conscience is considerably harmed and damaged as often as a person manifest its fruit to men, for then he receives as his reward the fruit of fleeting fame.

Oh, ask Him that I may be equal to my vocation and not abuse the graces He lavishes on me; if you knew how fearful that makes me sometimes...Then I cast myself on Him whom Saint John calls 'the Faithful and True,' and I beg Him to be Himself my fidelity!

I say, daughters, that we should set our eyes on Christ, our Good, and on His saints. There we shall learn true humility, the intellect will be enhanced, as I have said, and self-knowledge will not make one base and cowardly.

We do not climb Calvary as heroes, like the champion who has won the race. A saint is not a hero: he is someone filled with God and with God's strength.

We look at ourselves too much ... we do not have enough trust in Him who enfolds us in His love. We must not stand in front of our cross and examine it in itself, but withdrawing into the light of faith,we must rise above it and consider that it is the instrument of Divine Love.

Let us now come to the detachment which we must practice, for if this is carried out perfectly it includes everything else. I say “it includes everything else” because, if we care nothing for any created things, but embrace the Creator alone, His Majesty will infuse the virtues into us in such a way that, provided we labor to the best of our abilities day by day, we shall not have to wage war much longer, for the Lord will take our defense in hand against the devils and against the whole world.

We can assume that the prospect of the faithful who would follow Him on His way of the cross strengthened the Savior during His night on the Mount of Olives. And the strength of these cross-bearers helps Him after each of His falls.

‘You are dead and your life is hidden with Christ in God’ (Col. 3:3). There is the condition: we must be ‘dead’, otherwise we may be hidden in God sometimes, but we do not live habitually in Him; for all our sensitiveness, our self-seeking and such-like, causes us to depart from Him.

The imitation of the virtue in which one sees another excel has a great tendency to spread. This is good advice; don't forget it.