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What a great favor God does to those He places in the company of good people!

I cannot say this without tears and great joy of soul! How You desire, Lord, thus to be with us and to be present in the [Blessed] Sacrament ... You would be glad to be with us since You say that Your delight is to be with children of the earth.

I would never want any prayer that would not make the virtues grow within me.

God calls to us in countless little ways all the time. Through illnesses and suffering and through sorrow he calls to us. Through a truth glimpsed fleetingly in a state of prayer he calls to us. No matter how halfhearted such insights may be, God rejoices whenever we learn what he is trying to teach us.

But we think we are giving God everything, whereas what we are really offering Him is the revenue or the fruits of our land while keeping the stock and the right of ownership of it in our own hands.

It is love alone that gives worth to all things.

Where, my Lord, did I think I could find a remedy save in You? What folly; to flee from the light so as to be always stumbling!

..for the love of the Lord, let us make a real effort: let us leave our reason and our fears in His hands and let us forget the weakness of our nature which is apt to cause us so much worry...our own task is only to journey with good speed so that we may see the Lord.

We are so ignorant that what we have read and been told has not sufficed to teach us to disregard wandering thoughts, therefore I shall not be wasting time in instructing and consoling you about these trials. However, this will help you but little until God chooses to enlighten you, and additional measures are needed: His Majesty wishes us to learn by ordinary means to understand ourselves and to recognize the share taken in these troubles by our wandering imagination, our nature, and the devil’s temptations, instead of laying all the blame on our souls.

We must have no confidence whatever our own strength, but trust in His mercy and until we do this all is weakness.

When you speak with a Lord so great, you should think of Who it is you are addressing and what you yourself are, if only that you may speak to Him with proper respect. How can you address a king with the reverence he deserves unless you are clearly conscious of his position and yours?

I know, too, that our bodies are not the chief factors in the work we have before us; they are accessory: extreme humility is the principal point. It is the want of this, I believe, that stops people's progress. It may seem that we have made but little way: we should believe that is the case, and that our sisters are advancing much more rapidly than we are.