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...some books on prayer tell us where one must seek God. Within oneself, very clearly, is the best place to look.

I have not known anyone truly devoted to him (St. Joseph) and rendering him special services who has not advanced more in virtue. For in a powerful way he benefits souls who recommend themselves to him.

Let him have a fixed determination not to allow himself to be beaten, for, if the devil sees that he has firmly resolved to lose his life and his peace and everything that he can offer him rather than to return to the first room, he will very soon cease troubling him.

Int. Castle, 2nd mansion

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.

Would it be better, perhaps, to keep still about my needs, hoping You will provide the remedy for them? Certainly not; for You, my Lord and my delight, knowing the many needs there must be and the comfort it is for us to rely on You, tell us to ask you and that You will not fail to give.

Oh, what a good friend You make, my Lord! How You proceed by favoring and enduring. You wait for others to adapt to Your nature, and in the meanwhile You put up with theirs!

We are like so many foolish peasant lads: we think we know something of Thee, yet it must be comparatively nothing, for there are profound secrets even in ourselves of which we know naught.

Be convinced that where humility is truly present, God will give a peace and conformity — even though He may never give consolations — by which one will walk with greater contentment than will others with their consolations.

O my powerful God, how sublime are Your secrets, and how different spiritual things are from all that is visible and understandable here below.

O my God, what must a soul be like when it is in this state! It longs to be all one tongue with which to praise the Lord. It utters a thousand pious follies, in a continuous endeavor to please Him who thus possesses it.

In the case of a soul that through its own fault withdraws from this fount and plants itself in a place where the water is black and foul smelling, everything that flows from it is equally wretched and filthy.

For often when a person is distracted and forgetful of God, His majesty will awaken it.