If your men grow weary of the work or balk at obedience, you must bear with them. Get what you can gently from them. True, it is good to be firm in attaining your goal, but use appropriate, attractive, and agreeable means.

. . . in the final analysis, virtue is not found in extremes, but in prudence . . .

Nature makes trees put down deep roots before having them bear fruit, and even this is done gradually.

Our Lord and the saints accomplished more by suffering than by acting.

Furthermore, the apostolic life does not exclude contemplation but encompasses it and profits by it to know better the eternal truths it must proclaim

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.

Just as stinginess is blameworthy, so is facility in paying more for things than they are worth...