“God deliver me from people who are so spiritual that they want to turn everything into perfect contemplation, come what may.”

Settle yourself in solitude, and you will come upon God in yourself.

Mental prayer is nothing else but being on terms of friendship with God, frequently conversing in secret with Him.

It constantly happens that the Lord permits a soul to fall so that it may grow humbler.

Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people’s, if we are always criticizing trivial actions – which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives.

Souls who do not practice prayer are like people whose limbs are paralyzed.

No one should think or say anything of another which he would not wish thought or said of himself.

It is love alone that gives worth to all things.

All things pass; Patience attains all it strives for.

In a state of grace, the soul is like a well of limpid water, from which flow only streams of clearest crystal. Its works are pleasing both to God and man, rising from the River of Life, beside which it is rooted like a tree.

How poor is the wisdom of men, and how uncertain their forecast!

It is impossible for human tongue to exaggerate the riches which a vision from God brings to the soul: it even bestows health and refreshment on the body.

To reach something good it is very useful to have gone astray, and thus acquire experience.

Consider seriously how quickly people change, and how little trust is to be had in them; and hold fast to God, Who does not change.

In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel.

From moment to moment one can bear much.

May I not come before You with empty hands, since we are rewarded according to our deeds.

God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone.

Men of God and men of war have strange affinities.

My objectives are very limited. I want to do the best I can with the talent God gave me. I hope to goodness that every novel I do gets better and better, not worse and worse.

By God, if women had written stories, As clerks had within here oratories, They would have written of men more wickedness Than all the mark of Adam may redress.

There is no God and we are his prophets.

Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.

I believe in God, family, and McDonald’s. And in the office, that order is reversed.

Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it.