If bodies please thee, praise God on occasion of them, and turn back thy love upon their Maker; lest in these things which please thee, thou displease. If souls please thee, be they loved in God: for they too are mutable, but in Him they are firmly established.

Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; repair Thou it. It has that within which must offend Thine eyes; I confess and know it. But who shall cleanse it? or to whom should I cry, save Thee? Lord, cleanse me from my secret faults, and spare Thy servant from the power of the enemy. I believe, and therefore do I speak.

The measure of charity may be taken from the want of desires. As desires diminish in the soul, charity increases in it; and when it no longer feels any desire, then it possesses perfect charity.

When I seek you, my God, I seek a blessed life. I shall seek you, so that my soul may live.

He who commends the nature of the soul as the supreme good, and condemns the nature of the flesh as evil, at once both carnally desires the soul, and carnally flies the flesh, because he feels thus from human vanity, not from divine truth.

Beauty grows in you to the extent that love grows, because charity itself is the soul's beauty.

Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved.

What can be more excellent than prayer; what is more profitable to our life; what sweeter to our souls; what more sublime, in the course of our whole life, than the practice of prayer!

The soul is "torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.

Purity of soul cannot be lost without consent.

To seek the greatest good is to live well, and to live well is nothing other than to love God with the whole heart, the whole soul, and the whole mind: It is therefore obvious that this love must be kept whole and uncorrupt, that is temperance; it should not be overcome with difficulties, that is fortitude, it must not be subservient to anything else, that is justice; it must discriminate among things so as not to be deceived by falsity or fraud, that is prudence.

Unhappy is the soul enslaved by the love of anything that is mortal.

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.

If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.

He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.

Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.

God is more truly imagined than expressed, and He exists more truly than He is imagined.

Love, and He will draw near; love, and He will dwell within you.

Do not wander far and wide but return into yourself. Deep within man there dwells the truth.

The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire. You do not yet see what you long for, but the very act of desiring prepares you, so that when he comes you may see and be utterly satisfied.

Do you desire security? Here you have it. The Lord says to you, "I will never abandon you, I will always be with you." If a good man made you such a promise, you would trust him. God makes it, and do you doubt? Do you seek a support more sure than the word of God, which is infallible? Surely, He has made the promise, He has written it, He has pledged His word for it, it is most certain.

He who has God has everything; he who has everything but God has nothing.

Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.

To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.

Understanding is the wages of faith.

Every infinity... is made finite to God.

O Sacrament of Love! O sign of Unity! O bond of Charity! He who would have Life finds here indeed a Life to live in and a Life to live by.

When I am completely united to You, there will be no more sorrow or trials; entirely full of You, my life will be complete.

Singing is a lover's thing.

You called and shouted and burst my deafness. You flashed, shone, and scattered my blindness. You breathed odors, and I drew in breath and panted for You. I tasted, and I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.

We take for granted the slow miracle whereby water in the irrigation of a vineyard becomes wine. It is only when Christ turns water into wine, in a quick motion, as it were, that we stand amazed.

For what is faith unless it is to believe what you do not see?

Our life is a gymnasium of desire.... When Christians say "God," what do we wish to express? This word is all that we yearn for."

There can only be two basic loves... the love of God unto the forgetfulness of self, or the love of self unto the forgetfulness and denial of God.

Doubt is but another element of faith.

If you are silent, be silent out of love. If you speak, speak out of love.

Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.

We cannot pass our guardian angel's bounds, resigned or sullen, he will hear our sighs.

He that is jealous is not in love.

He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.

Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.

No eulogy is due to him who simply does his duty and nothing more.

Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.

Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee.

Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others.