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.

Would that God, Monsieur, had rendered us worthy of spending our lives, as Our Lord did, for the salvation of those poor souls so far removed from all assistance.

Ultimately, Monsieur, we must go to God per infamiam et bonam famam [whether spoken of well or ill], and His Divine Goodness is merciful to us when it pleases Him to allow us to encounter blame and public contempt. I am sure you have borne patiently the embarrassment you experienced because of what has happened. If the glory of the world is nothing but smoke, the contrary is a solid good, when it is accepted in the right way. I hope that great good will come to us from this humiliation.

I feel so strongly about the truths Our Lord taught us by word and example that I cannot help but see how everything done according to that teaching always succeeds perfectly well, while things done the opposite way have a quite different result.

You should not open your mouth except to express gratitude for benefits you have received, and never to mention your discontent.

Be acted upon rather than active. In this way, God will do through you alone what all men put together could not do without Him.

The vine-stock bears fruit as long as it is attached to its stem; apart from that, no.