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What we need most in order to make progress is to be silent before this great God with our appetites and our tongue, for the language He best hears is silent love.

The road and ascent to God, then, necessarily demands a habitual effort to renounce and mortify the appetites; the sooner this mortification is achieved, the sooner the soul reaches the top. But until the appetites are eliminated, a person will not arrive, no matter how much virtue he practices. For he will fail to acquire perfect virtue, which lies in keeping the soul empty, naked, and purified of every appetite.

We come to the great King of Heaven with empty hands, in debt to Him for everything: life itself, and grace, and all the gifts He lavishes on us. Yet all we can say is, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all I owe,’ while all the time we could never pay anything towards the remission of our own debts, if God did not put into our hands the means to do so. And then, how often do we go away and refuse pardon for some slight fault in our neighbors, withholding our love, remaining aloof, or even nursing a grievance against them, and building up grudges that cool charity.

The dark night becomes the school of all the virtues: it trains one to resignation, to patience, from the moment that one is faithful to the spiritual life without finding consolation and refreshment in it. The soul attains a high degree of love of God, inasmuch as it acts solely according to His will.

Good works wrought in the season of spiritual dryness and hardness are like the freshness of the winter morning. What we then do for God in dryness of spirit is most precious in His eyes. It is then that we acquire abundant virtues and graces, and what we achieve with toil and labor is in general better, more perfect and lasting than what we acquire in spiritual sweetness.

After all, God gives no more than what can be endured; and His Majesty gives patience first.

I do not wish to store up merits for heaven, I want to work for Thy Love alone, with the single goal of pleasing Thee, of bringing consolation to Thy Sacred Heart and of saving souls who Thou wilt love eternally.

May nothing make you waver. Look at Him. He's awaiting you and is filled with infinite love and will make you His bride. He wants to forge with you the most intimate union. He will make you divine, by joining Himself to you. You will live in Jesus amid infinite sweetness, purity, holiness, goodness, amid the love of One who is God.

Believe me, the question is not whether we wear the religious habit or not, but whether we practice the virtues and submit our will in all things to the will of God.

There are many Christians who are virtuous men, and who do great things, but their virtues and good works are utterly useless in the matter of eternal life, because they seek themselves in them, and not solely the honor and glory of God.

Holiness does not consist in this or that practice; it consists in a disposition of the heart, which makes us always humble and little in the arms of God, well aware of our feebleness, but boldly confident in the Father's goodness.

We seem to ourselves to be making progress, yet we become weary, for, believe me, we are walking through a mist; it will be fortunate if we do not lose ourselves. Do you think, my daughters, if we could travel from one country to another in eight days, that it would be well to spend a year on the journey, through wind, snow, and inundations and over bad roads? Would it not be better to get it over at once, for it is full of dangers and serpents?