[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 humbles in order to raise up, and allows the suffering of interior and exterior afflictions in order to bring about peace. He often desires some things more than we do, but wants us to merit the grace of accomplishing them by several practices of virtue and to beg for this with many prayers.

If you grant asylum to so many refugees, your house may be sacked sooner by the soldiers; I see that clearly. The question is, however, whether, because of this danger, you should refuse to practice such a beautiful virtue as charity.

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

All of you desire to belong entirely to God, and God also wants all of you to belong to Him

[W]ork at ridding yourself of the esteem you have had up to now for the glitter and sparkle of virtue and the vain applause of the world, which Our Lord so assiduously avoided and so often recommends us to shun, and that you labor in earnest to acquire true and solid virtues.

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.