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Let us live with God as with a Friend. Let us make our faith a living thing, so as to remain in communion with Him through everything. That is how saints are made.

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

A love of pleasure, and attachment to it, usually fires the will toward enjoyment of things that give pleasure.  A more intense enkindling of another, better love (love of the soul's Bridegroom) is necessary for the vanquishing of the appetites and the denial of this pleasure.  By finding satisfaction and strength in this love, it will have the courage and constancy to readily deny all other appetites.

But they, O my God and my life, will see and experience Your mild touch, who withdraw from the world and become mild, bringing the mild into harmony with the mild, thus enabling themselves to experience and enjoy You.

Look at my whole life filled with suffering, and only in the incident on Mount Tabor do you hear about my joy. The great saints...spent long periods without any spiritual consolation.

Our Beloved does not need our brilliant deeds nor our beautiful thoughts. If He wanted sublime concepts, has He not the angels, who surpass in knowledge the greatest geniuses of the world?

Mark well, however, that self-knowledge is indispensable, even for those whom God takes to dwell in the same mansion with Himself. Nothing else, however elevated, perfects the soul which must never seek to forget its own nothingness. Let humility be always at work, like the bee at the honeycomb, or all will be lost. But, remember, the bee leaves its hive to fly in search of flowers and the soul should sometimes cease thinking of itself to rise in meditation on the grandeur and majesty of its God. It will learn its own baseness better thus than by self-contemplation, and will be freer from the reptiles which enter the first room where self-knowledge is acquired.

Since this edifice is built entirely on humility, the closer one comes to God, the more progress there must be in this virtue; and if there is no progress in humility, everything is going to be ruined.

At times the little bird's heart is assailed by the storm, and it seems it should believe in the existence of no other thing except the clouds surrounding it; this is the moment of perfect joy for the poor little weak creature. And what joy it experiences when remaining there just the same! and gazing at the Invisible Light which remains hidden from its faith!

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.

...many of these would have God will that which they themselves will, and are fretful at having to will that which He wills...Hence it happens to them that oftentimes they think that that wherein they find not their own will and pleasure is not the will of God; and that, on the other hand, when they themselves find satisfaction, God is satisfied. Thus they measure God by themselves and not themselves by God, acting quite contrarily to that which He Himself taught in the Gospel, saying: That he who should lose his will for His sake, the same should gain it; and he who should desire to gain it, the same should lose it.

The devil gains much and is extremely pleased to see a soul afflicted and disquieted, for he knows that disturbance impedes it from being totally occupied in loving and praising God.