All consolation that does not come from God is but desolation; when the soul has learned to receive no comfort but in God only, it has passed beyond the reach of desolation.

In your occupations, try to possess your soul in peace. It is not a good plan to be in haste to perform any action that it may be sooner over. On the contrary, you should accustom yourself to do whatever you have to do with tranquility, in order that you may retain the possession of yourself and of settled peace.

I have never found any who prayed so well as those who had never been taught how. They who have no master in man, have one in the Holy Spirit.

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.

Self-seeking is the gate by which a soul departs from peace; and total abandonment to the will of God, that by which it returns.

It is the fire of suffering that brings forth the gold of godliness.

Oh, that we fully understood how very opposite our self-righteousness is to the designs of God!