God felt, God tasted and enjoyed is indeed God, but God with those gifts which flatter the soul, God in darkness, in privation, in forsakenness, in sensibility, is so much God, that he is so to speak God bare and alone. Shall we fear this death, which is to produce in us the true divine life of grace?

True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then is to desire -- but to desire what God would have us desire. He who asks what he does not from the bottom of his heart desire, is mistaken in thinking that he prays.

The greatest defect of common education is, that we are in the habit of putting pleasure all on one side, and weariness on the other; all weariness in study, all pleasure in idleness.

Before putting yourself in peril, it is necessary to foresee and fear it; but when one is there, nothing remains but to despise it.

It is often our own imperfection which makes us reprove the imperfection of others; a sharp-sighted self-love of others

There is no real elevation of mind in a contempt of little things; it is, on the contrary, from too narrow views that we consider those things of little importance which have in fact such extensive consequences.

Make this simple rule the guide of your life: to have no will but God's.