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As we said, the soul is not united with God in this life through understanding, or through enjoyment, or through imagination, or through any other sense; but only faith, hope, and charity (according to the intellect, memory, and will) can unite the soul with God in this life.

When under the action of detachment and spiritual darkness, faith plants firm roots in the soul, hope and charity likewise flow into it; a charity that logically does not manifest itself by giving a sensation of sweetness, but rather by producing in the soul a strength, a more decisive courage, a vigor hitherto unknown.

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.

He (God) lives in some as though in his own house, commanding and ruling everything; and in others as though a stranger in a strange house, where they do not permit him to give orders or do anything.

We'll know the intensity of His love by the love we have for our neighbor.

Oh, what a good friend You make, my Lord! How You proceed by favoring and enduring. You wait for others to adapt to Your nature, and in the meanwhile You put up with theirs!

O my God, how fervent and strong is the charity of a soul who is united with You by love! Those whom You have taken to Yourself in this way, cannot confine themselves to their personal advantage, and be satisfied with it. Nor would it suffice for them to go to heaven alone, but with solicitude and affection wholly celestial, and with utmost diligence, they endeavor to lead many others with them. Grant, O Lord, that my love for You may have the same effect on me.

Forget your self-interests for theirs, however much they rebel: when opportunity occurs take some burden upon yourself to ease your neighbor of it.

God is freeing my heart of every natural attraction, perhaps to make room there for purer things in which there will be only the desire for my neighbor's good.

Against all the movements of like and dislike the Lord's precept is set: "Thou must love thy neighbor as thyself." That applies without conditions or reductions. The neighbor is not he whom I like. It is everyone who approaches me, without exception. And again it enjoins, "Thou canst, so thou must!" It is the Lord who demands it, and He demands nothing impossible. Much more, He makes possible, what of course would not be possible.

Silence and solitude are brother and sister who hold hands and gently help each other.

Always be more disposed toward giving to others than giving to yourself, and thus you will not be envious of nor selfish toward your neighbor. This is to be understood from the viewpoint of perfection, for God is angered with those who do not give precedence to His good pleasure over that of men.