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In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.

If I did not simply live from one moment to another, it would be impossible for me to be patient, but I only look at the present, I forget the past, and I take good care not to forestall the future.

And yet they become restless, for they cannot do as they would like to and control their feelings all at once. Yet oh, dear me! Are not these the same persons who some time ago were meditating upon how the Lord suffered, and upon what a good thing it is to suffer, and who were even desiring to suffer?

Time is but a shadow, a dream; already God sees us in glory and takes joy in our eternal beatitude. How this thought helps my soul! I understand then why He lets us suffer.

Oh my God, how much You suffer for one who grieves so little over Your pains! ... Behold Christians, let us consider it carefully and we shall never finish understanding the splendor of the Lord's mercies and what we owe Him.

I see clearly that you are mistaking the road, and that you will never arrive at the end of your journey. You want to climb the mountain whereas God wishes you to descend it. He is waiting for you in the fruitful valley of humility.

Take pains to be peaceful, but not with a certain kind of peace that never wishes to experience what war is; for to arrive at a true peace according to God, one must acquire it through its opposite.

O my Lord, when I think of the many ways You suffered and how You deserved none of these sufferings, I... do not know where my common sense was when I didn't want to suffer, nor where I am when I excuse myself.

Only the person who renounces self-importance, who no longer struggles to defend or assert himself, can be large enough for God's boundless action.

First, let him have a habitual desire to imitate Christ in everything that he does, conforming himself to His life; upon which life he must meditate so that he may know how to imitate it, and to behave in all things as Christ would behave.

My heart with ardent longings

Awaits my Well-Beloved

I ask of heaven and all created things

Where the Loved One dwells.

And all reply: You'll find Him

In the straight and humble heart.

Oh! Thought of Him so strong!

Oh! His looks, all Love and Mercy.

Perfection does not lie in the virtues that the soul knows it has, but in the virtues that our Lord sees in it. This is a closed book; hence one has no reason for presumption, but must remain prostrate on the ground with respect to self.