There is a vast difference between an Apostolic life and the solitude of the Carthusians. The latter is truly very holy but is not suited to those whom God has called to the former, which is in itself more excellent.

[M]ay you be more advanced in the school of solid virtue, which is practiced in an excellent way in the midst of suffering, and which keeps good servants of God in fear when they have nothing to suffer!

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

All comes at the proper time to him who knows how to wait.

Experience teaches that what is feasible at the beginning is sometimes harmful as things go on, or subject to troublesome inconveniences

Your soul will be blessed, Sister, if you bear patiently the troubles of mind and body His Providence sends you, or which come to you from within and without.

Use gentle methods to get whatever good you can from priests and monks who are slaves, as well as from merchants and captives. Resort to severe measures only in extreme cases, for fear lest the hardship they are already enduring in their state of captivity, joined to the strictness you might want to exercise in virtue of your authority, drive them to despair. . . . It is not light they need, but strength, and strength permeates through the external balm of words and good example.