Do not make judgments, and you will travel no quicker road to the forgiveness of your sins. 'Judge not, so that you may not be judged' (Lk. 6:37).

Everyone who asks something of God and does not receive it doubtless does not receive it for one of these reasons: either because they ask before the time, or they ask unworthily, or out of vainglory, or because if they received what they asked they would become proud or fall into negligence.

Pride is the utter poverty of soul disguised as riches, imaginary light where in fact there is darkness.

I know a man who, when he saw a woman of striking beauty, praised the Creator for her. The sight of her lit within him the love of God.

Our inhuman enemy inspires the thought that God loves mankind, and that He quickly forgives this sin. But when we observe the guile of demons, then we see that after the commission of the sin, they suggest to us that God is a righteous and implacable Judge. The first they say in order to lead us to sin, the second, in order to weigh us down in despair.

Humility is the only thing that no devil can imitate.

Meekness is an unchanging state of mind, which both in honor and dishonor remains the same. Meekness consists in praying sincerely and undisturbedly in the face of afflictions from one's neighbor. Meekness is a cliff rising from the sea of irritability, against which all the that waves that strive against it break, but which is itself never broken.