If you lose an opportunity you will be like one who lets the bird fly away; you will never get it back.

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.

If it were given to a man to see virtue's reward in the next world, he would occupy his intellect, memory and will in nothing but good works, careless of danger or fatigue.

Never listen to accounts of the frailty of others; and if anyone should complain to you of another, humbly ask him not to speak about him at all.

He who interrupts the course of his spiritual exercises and prayer is like a man who allows a bird to escape from his hand; he can hardly catch it again.

Live in faith and hope, though it be in darkness, for in this darkness God protects the soul. Cast your care upon God for you are His and He will not forget you. Do not think that He is leaving you alone, for that would be to wrong Him.

It is great wisdom to know how to be silent and to look at neither the remarks, nor the deeds, nor the lives of others.