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Nevertheless, God usually imparts to those whom he brings into this night the humility and the readiness, even though they feel displeasure, to do what is commanded of them for his sake alone, and they become detached from many things because of this lack of gratification.

I should rather simply confess, ‘The Mighty One has done great things for me,’ and the greatest of these is to have shown me my littleness, my incapability of all good.

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.

We are His, sisters, let Him do what He will with us, and lead us where He will. If we are really humble and annihilate ourselves, not only in our imagination (which often deceives us), but if we truly detach ourselves from all things, our Lord will not only grant us these favors but many others that we do not know even how to desire.

Hence, don't pay any attention to the fears they raise or to the picture of the dangers they paint for you...Should anyone tell you that prayer is dangerous, consider him the real danger and run from him. Don't forget this counsel, for perhaps you will need it. There will be danger in not having humility and the other virtues. But that the way of prayer be a way of danger - God would never will that. It seems the devil has invented these fears, and so he has been skillful, apparently, in making some who have practiced prayer fall away.

When the spiritual man has been brought to nothing, when his humility is perfect, then will take place the union of the soul with God. This consists not in spiritual refreshment, sweetness and fine sentiments but in the living death of the cross.

The angels who assist Him know well the attitude of their King, for He delights more in the unpolished manners of a humble shepherd who He realizes would say more if he knew more than He does in the talk of very wise and learned men, however elegant their discourse, if they don't walk in humility.

Be convinced that where humility is truly present, God will give a peace and conformity — even though He may never give consolations — by which one will walk with greater contentment than will others with their consolations.

The remembrance of my faults humbles me and makes me afraid to rely on my own strength, which is nothing but weakness.

Just as a mother is proud of her children so we shall be proud of one another without the least trace of jealousy.

It is true you cannot enter all the mansions by your own power, however great it may appear to you, unless the Lord of the castle Himself admits you. Therefore I advise you to use no violence if you meet with any obstacle, for that would displease Him so much that He would never give you admission to them. He dearly loves humility: if you think yourselves unworthy to enter the third mansion, He will grant you all the sooner the favour of entering the fifth.

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.