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Desire to be empty and poor for Christ's sake. This state must be embraced with a perfect heart and you must really want it. If your heart is truly engaged in these efforts you shall speedily attain to great joy and consolation.

Sacrifice and renunciation of our will are needed to come to complete union with Our Lord.

A love of pleasure, and attachment to it, usually fires the will toward enjoyment of things that give pleasure. A more intense enkindling of another, better love (love of the soul's Bridegroom) is necessary for the vanquishing of the appetites and the denial of this pleasure. By finding satisfaction and strength in this love, it will have the courage and constancy to readily deny all other appetites.

The people of Israel did not find the manna sweet above all else, although it was so in fact, because they would not limit their desires to it alone. The sweetness and nourishment of the manna was not perceived by them, not because it was lacking, but because they longed for other foods beside it.

We must dig deeply in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many pockets containing treasures: however deep we dig we will never find their end or their limit. Indeed, in every pocket new seams of fresh riches are discovered on all sides.

Those who desire nothing else than God walk not in darkness, however poor and dark they are in their own sight. And those who walk not presumptuously, nor according to their own satisfactions, whether from God or from creatures, nor do their own will in anything, have nothing to stumble over...

O that someone would teach us how to understand, practice and feel what is involved in the profound lesson of self-denial given by our Lord himself, so that religious people may see how different their conduct ought to be from that which many of them think to be right!

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

Be very attentive to His voice, and remember that when He thus takes His place in a heart, it is to dwell there alone and apart. You understand what I mean...I am not referring to the religious life, which is the great break with the world, but to that detachment, that purity of intention which, as it were, throws a veil over all that is not God and enables us to cling to Him unceasingly by faith.

Delight in the world's good things
at the very most
can only tire the appetite
and spoil the palate;
and so, not for all of sweetness
will I ever lose myself,
but for I-don't-know-what
which is so gladly found.

What is the sacrifice? What is the Cross but heaven when Jesus Christ is on it? Give Him your will in such a way that you can no longer say "I want this," but I desire what He desires.

You know it has ever been my desire to become a Saint, but I have always felt, in comparing myself with the Saints, that I am as far removed from them as the grain of sand, which the passerby tramples underfoot... Instead of being discouraged, I concluded that God would not inspire desires which could not be realized, and that I may aspire to sanctity in spite of my littleness. For me to become great is impossible. I must bear with myself and my many imperfections...