[Do not] overburden yourself with rules of devotion, but persist in doing well those you have, your daily actions, your work; in a word, let everything revolve around doing well what you are doing.

A doctor who keeps a person from becoming ill deserves more merit than one who cures him.

[A] truly humble spirit humbles itself as much amid honors as amid insults, acting like the honeybee which makes its honey equally as well from the dew that falls on the wormwood as from that which falls on the rose.

Let us do our duty well; let us go straight to God; let us work to become very humble, very patient, very mortified, and very charitable.

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

God has granted me today a very particular fondness for requesting of Him that same virtue of ever choosing the worst and that which is contrary to my own liking.

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.