However high be your endeavors, unless you renounce and subjugate your own will - unless you forget yourself and all that pertains to yourself - not one step will you advance on the road to perfection.

Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved. The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of Divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for until the cord be broken, the bird cannot fly.

Never relax, for you will not attain to the possession of true spiritual delights if first you do not learn to deny your every desire.

Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire. The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross.

God desires the smallest degree of purity of conscience in you more than all the works you can perform.

He who avoids prayer is avoiding everything that is good.

Live in the world as if only God and your soul were in it; then your heart will never be made captive by any earthly thing.