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More effective than the mortification one practices according to one's own choice is the cross that God lays upon one, exteriorly and interiorly.

The fly that clings to honey hinders its flight, and the soul that allows itself attachment to spiritual sweetness hinders its own liberty and contemplation.

We cannot give him anything, he needs nothing and asks for nothing. 'He wants but one thing, the exaltation of the soul.' The only thing that gives him pleasure is the enrichment of the soul.

God does not bestow these favors on a possessive soul, since He gives them out of a very special love for the recipient. For the individual receiving them is one who loves God with great detachment.

Nothing so pleases Him as to see those souls developing and nothing can raise them so high as to become, in some way, equal with God. That is why He asks of the soul the tribute of its love, since it is the property of love to equalize, as far as possible, the lover with the beloved.

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.

God cannot inspire unrealistic desires.

Oh how desirable is this union with God's will! Happy is the soul that has reached it. Such a soul will live tranquilly in this life, and in the next as well. Nothing in earthly events afflicts it unless it finds itself in some danger of losing God or sees that He is offended: neither sickness, nor poverty, nor death...for the soul sees well that the Lord knows what He is doing better than it knows what it is desiring.

If you are nothing, you must not forget that Jesus is all...think only of this uniquely lovable all.

There is such a need to mortify the intellect, the memory, and the exterior senses, so that they become almost spiritual, and then united to the soul they find in God alone their nourishment and their consolation, and they can say: "My heart and my flesh have exulted in the living God."

Spiritual persons must exercise care that in their heart and joy they do not become attached to temporal goods. They must fear lest, through a gradual increase, their small attachments become great.

The poverty of the Carmelite is very great. She can possess nothing, and this is an assurance that her whole capacity for possessing is filled with God alone. By being poor she becomes more like her divine Spouse, who did not have a place to lay His head. The Carmelite possesses God alone.