“Never relax, for you will not attain to the possession of true spiritual delights if first you do not learn to deny your every desire.”

He who loses an opportunity is like the man who lets a bird fly from his hand, for he will never recover it.

Obedience is a penance of reason, and, on that account, a sacrifice more acceptable than all corporal penances and mortifications.

Let my soul live as if separated from my body.

Yearning: It needs to hurt in order to be worthy of the word. Otherwise it is just wanting.

Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved.

To love is to be transformed into what we love. To love God is therefore to be transformed into God.

Never listen to accounts of the frailty of others; and if anyone should complain to you of another, humbly ask him not to speak about him at all.

Faith is the union of God and the soul.

Seek in reading and thou shalt find in meditation; knock in prayer and it shall be opened in contemplation.

To reach satisfaction in all desire its possession in nothing, To come to the knowledge of all desire the knowledge of nothing. To come to possess all desire the possession of nothing. To arrive at being all desire to be nothing.

If you lose an opportunity you will be like one who lets the bird fly away; you will never get it back.

They say, “God told me”, or “God replied to me”. And yet most of the time they are talking to themselves.

The road is narrow. He who wishes to travel it more easily must cast off all things and use the cross as his cane. In other words, he must be truly resolved to suffer willingly for the love of God in all things.

Lord, I shall see you no more with the eyes of the flesh.

He who interrupts the course of his spiritual exercises and prayer is like a man who allows a bird to escape from his hand; he can hardly catch it again.

The soul that walks in love neither tires others nor grows tired.

There is no reward so delightful, no pleasure so exquisite, as having one’s work known and acclaimed by those whose applause confers honor.

Love delights and glorifies in giving, not receiving.

From love arises hatred of those things which are contrary to what we love, or which oppose and thwart us in those things that we delight in.

I have friends whose society is delightful to me; they are persons of all countries and of all ages; distinguished in war, in council, and in letters; easy to live with, always at my command.

The most part of all princes have more delight in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace.

The pleasures of humility are really the most refined, inward, and exquisite delights in the world.

As God delights in his own beauty, he must necessarily delight in the creature’s holiness which is a conformity to and participation of it, as truly as [the] brightness of a jewel, held in the sun’s beams, is a participation or derivation of the sun’s brightness, though immensely less in degree.

Suffering makes us capable of the full force of the Master of Delight; it makes us capable also to bear the utter play of the Master of Power. Pain is the key that opens the gates of strength; it is the high-road that leads to the city of beatitude.