Nothing marks so much the solid advancement of a soul, as the view of one’s wretchedness without anxiety and without discouragement.
As a general rule, those truths which we highly relish, and which shed a degree of practical light upon the things which we are required to give up for God, are leadings of Divine grace, which we should follow without hesitation.
This is the love that does all things; that brings to pass even the evils we suffer; so shaping them that they are but instruments of preparing the good which, as yet, has not arrived.
Thou lovest like an infinite God when Thou lovest; Thou movest heaven and earth to save Thy loved ones. Thou becomest man, a babe, the vilest of men, covered with reproaches, dying with infamy and under the pangs of the cross; all this is not too much for an infinite love.
The presence of God calms the soul, and gives it quiet and repose.
We are never less alone than when we are in the society of a single, faithful friend; never less deserted than when we are carried in tne arms of the All-Powerful.
True love goes ever straight forward, not in its own strength, but esteeming itself as nothing. Then indeed we are truly happy. The cross is no longer a cross when there is no self to suffer under it.
Pure love is in the will alone; it is no sentimental love, for the imagination has no part in it; it loves, if we may so express it, without feeling, as faith believes without seeing.
There is but one way in which God should be loved, and that is to take no step except with Him and for Him, and to follow with a generous self-abandonment every thing which He requires.
O God, the creature knows not to what end Thou hast made Him; teach him, and write in the depths of his soul that the clay must suffer itself to be shaped at the will of the potter.
Alas! how many souls there are full of self, and yet desirous of doing good and serving God, but in such a way as to suit themselves; who desire to impose rules upon God as to His manner of drawing them to Himself. They want to serve and possess Him, but they are not willing to be possessed by Him.
The blood of a nation ought never to be shed except for its own preservation in the utmost extremity.
There is no more dangerous illusion than the fancies by which people try to avoid illusion.
Discouragement is simply the despair of wounded self-love.
Peace does not dwell in outward things, but within the soul.
Were in prayer, as indeed you ought to be.
If God bores you, tell Him that He bores you, that you prefer the vilest amusements to His presence, that you only feel at your ease when you are far from Him.
The art of cookery is the art of poisoning mankind, by rendering the appetite still importunate, when the wants of nature are supplied.
Courage is a virtue only so far as it is directed by prudence.
The realization of God’s presence is the one sovereign remedy against temptation.
If we love Him infinitely more than we do ourselves, we make an unconditional sacr Here it is that the Spirit teaches us all truth; for all truth is eminently contained in this sacrifice of love, where the soul strips itself of every thing to present it to God.