The works of God are not accomplished when we wish them, but whenever it pleases Him.

. . . God is pleased to communicate himself to the simple and humble and to use the smallest and lowliest to make them great and exalted. In a word, it is He Himself who has called and approved them and even inspired their humble manner of living.

We must be firm but not rough in our guidance and avoid an insipid kind of meekness, which is ineffective.

We should spend as much time in thanking God for his benefits as we do in asking him for them.

It will be easier for you to bring him around to where you want him more by gentleness and patience than by being too uncompromising.

Noise makes no good, good makes no noise.

In a word, we are like the servants of the centurion in the Gospel with regard to the bishops, insofar as when they say to us: go, we are obliged to go; if they say: come, we are obliged to come; do that, and we are obliged to do it.