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Since, O my God, You inspire me to make myself like You in everything, as much as I can, I want particularly to imitate You in those virtues that are so pleasing to Your most loving Heart, namely: humility, meekness, and obedience.

...Sunday must be a great door through which celestial life can enter into everyday life, and strength for the work of the entire week, and how the great feasts, holidays, and seasons of lent, lived though in the spirit of the Church permit the soul to mature the more from year to year to the eternal Sabbath rest.

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

Do not...be downcast if you have not responded immediately to Our Lord's voice, for His Majesty is willing to wait for us many a day and even many a year, especially when He sees perseverance and good desires in our hearts.

I keep my eyes fixed on eternity and in this way I obtain constancy in the vortex of city life, freedom in social relations, and a merry heart.

In the first place, we ought to be astonished by this fact: when we praise God or give him thanks for his benefits in general, we are not particularly concerned whether or not our prayer is acceptable to him. On the other hand, we demand to see the results of our petitions.  What is the image of God that motivates our prayer: an instrument to be used or the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?

Souls are guarded jealously in the heart of God and what we think we sometimes understand of our soul is nonetheless always a fleeting reflection of that which will remain God's secret until the day in which everything will come to light. The hope in this future revelation gives me great joy.

God created the child who knows only how to make his feeble cries heard; He has created the poor savage who has nothing but the natural law to guide him. It is to their hearts that God deigns to lower Himself. These are the wild flowers whose simplicity attracts Him. When coming down in this way, God manifests His infinite grandeur.

The deeper a soul is bound to God, the more completely surrendered to grace, the stronger will be its influence on the form of the church. Conversely, the more an era is engulfed in the night of sin and estrangement from God the more it needs souls united to God.

For often it is God's will that His elect should be conscious of their misery and so He withdraws His help from them a little -- and no more than that is needed to make us recognize our limitations very quickly. They then realize that this is a way of testing them, for they gain a clear perception of their shortcomings, and sometimes they derive more pain from finding that, in spite of themselves, they are still grieving about earthly things, and not very important things either, than from the matter which is troubling them.

All the being of creation, then, compared with the infinite Being of God, is nothing. And therefore the soul that sets its affection upon the being of creation is likewise nothing in the eyes of God, and less than nothing; for, as we have said, love makes equality and similitude, and even sets the lover below the object of his love.

Let yourself be seen by all as you really are. Just as we are in the sight of God, so let us be in the sight of all.