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When aglow with love, the soul ponders within itself God’s immensity, His faithfulness, the proofs of love He has shown us, His benefits to us ... the humble soul will never put God high enough nor itself low enough. But this is the wonderful thing: its powerlessness will be turned into wisdom, and the defeat of its humility — for never will it be sufficiently humble in its own eyes — will become the greatest source of sweetness in its life.

Thus out of this night springs first the knowledge of oneself, and on that, as a foundation, is built up the knowledge of God.

The practice of humility consists not only in thinking and saying that you are full of faults, but in rejoicing because others think and say the same thing about you.

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.

The proud person is like a grain of wheat thrown into water: it swells, it gets big. Expose that grain to the fire: it dries up, it burns. The humble soul is like a grain of wheat thrown into the earth: it descends, it hides itself, it disappears, it dies; but to revive in heaven.

I have understood that the thing that separates me most from God is my pride. I propose to be humble. Without humility the other virtues are hypocrisy. ... Humility gains us similarity to Christ, peace of soul, holiness and intimate union with God.

How sweet is the way of love. True, one can fall or commit infidelities, but, knowing how to draw profit from everything, love quickly consumes everything that can be displeasing to Jesus; it leaves nothing but a humble and profound peace in the depths of the heart.

Through this humility acquired by means of self-knowledge, individuals are purged of all those imperfections of the vice of pride into which they fell in the time of their prosperity. Aware of their own dryness and wretchedness, the thought of their being more advanced than others does not even occur in its first movements, as it did before; on the contrary, they realize that others are better.

My being, as I see it and as I see myself in it, is null; by myself I am not and I am nothing by myself; at each moment I am faced with nothingness and I ought to receive being anew, moment by moment. And yet "being" is exactly this non-being, and therefore each moment I touch the fullness of being.

What you most seek and desire you will not find by this way of yours, nor through high contemplation, but in much humility and submission of heart.

It seems to me that love is like an arrow sent forth by the will. If it travels with all the force that the will has, freed from all earthly things, and directed to God alone, it truly must wound His Majesty. Thus, fixed in God Himself, who is love, it is brought back from there with the greatest gain...The tremendous gain drawn from this kind of prayer is clearly recognized through the effects, the virtues, the living faith and the contempt for the world left in the soul.

God refuses only the person who does not admit his own weakness; He sends away only the unhappy proud person. You must "hold him" well and strongly, with a poor spirit, with a poor heart, with a life entirely poor...The life of a soul who seeks true happiness clearly and indisputably depends on this: that those who seek their joy in God are the ones who give joy to God.