How can they be delivered from the life of self, who are not willing to abandon all their possessions? How can they believe themselves despoiled of all, who possess the greatest treasure under heaven? Do not oblige me to name it, but judge, if you are enlightened; there is one of them which is less than the other, which is lost before it, but which those who must lose everything have the greatest trouble in parting with.

God's designs regarding you, and His methods of bringing about these designs, are infinitely wise.

O my God, how true it is that we may have of Thy gifts and yet may be full of ourselves!

If knowing answers to life's questions is absolutely necessary to you, then forget the journey. You will never make it, for this is a journey of unknowables - of unanswered questions, enigmas, incomprehensibles, and, most of all, things unfair.

We never know how strongly we cling to objects until they are taken away, and he who thinks htat he is attached to nothing, is frequently grandly mistaken, being bound to a thousand things, unknown to himself.

To rob God of nothing; to refuse Him nothing; to require of Him nothing; this is great perfection.

God causes us to promise in time of peace what He exacts from us in time of war; He enables us to make our abandonments in joy, but He requires the fulfilment of them in the midst of much bitterness.