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I know, too, that our progress has nothing to do with the body, which is the thing that matters least. What the journey which I am referring to demands is great humility, and it is the lack of this, I think, if you see what I mean, which prevents us from making progress.

If I did not suffer from moment to moment, I would not be able to keep patience, but I see only the present moment; I forget the past and take care not to peer into the future.

There is another reason also why the soul has traveled safely in this obscurity; it has suffered: for the way of suffering is safer, and also more profitable, than that of rejoicing and of action. In suffering God gives strength, but in action and in joy the soul does but show its own weakness and imperfections. And in suffering, the soul practices and acquires virtue, and becomes pure, wiser, and more cautious.

The soul’s preparation for this union is not that it should understand or perceive or feel or imagine anything concerning either God or anything else, but that it should have purity and love—that is, perfect resignation and detachment from everything for God’s sake alone.

While the soul is in mortal sin nothing can profit it; none of its good works merit an eternal reward, since they do not proceed from God as their first principle, and by Him alone is our virtue real virtue.

It's an amusing thing that even though we still have a thousand impediments and imperfections and our virtues have hardly begun to grow -and please, God, they might have begun- we are yet not ashamed to seek spiritual delights in prayer or to complain about dryness.

God has no need of anyone to carry out His work of sanctification, but just as He allows a skillful gardener to raise rare and delicate plants, so does He wish to be aided in sanctifying souls.

I do not count on my own merits, since I have none, but I trust in Him who is Virtue and Sanctity Itself.

Especially persons of prayer should always be attached to St. Joseph... Those who cannot find a master to teach them prayer should take this glorious saint for their master, and they will not go astray.

It is not the soul that makes the progress, but it is Christ, who carries her as a child is carried.

God does not despise these hidden struggles with ourselves, so much richer in merit because they are unseen: "The patient man is better than the valiant and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh cities. (Prov. xvi. 32)".

In order to become a temple of the Lord (in which He will be pleased to dwell)- it is necessary to put unto practice His teachings and virtues, and the first of these is purity.