What we can accomplish as good as it may be does not compare to what God can accomplish

The spirit is the part that is supposed to consciously direct everything in the person, including the soul.

Imagine that you had discovered gold or oil on a certain property, and no one else knew about it. Can you see yourself being sad and feeling deprived for having to gather all your resources and sacrifice them in order to buy that property? Hardly. Now you know what it is like to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus.

Generally speaking we don't want to hear from the soul. We want it to just do its job. Unfortunately, in a broken world, it also is broken, and we're going to hear from it because many of the ordinary miseries and extraordinary glories of human life are expressions of the state of the soul.

Human beings are at their core defined by what they worship rather than primarily by what they think, know, or believe. That is bound up with the central Augustinian claim that we are what we love.

The most important thing in your life is not what you do; it's who you become. That's what you will take into eternity.

Feelings too must be renovated: old ones removed in many cases, or at least thoroughly modified, and new ones installed or at least heightened into a new prominence.