“From silly devotions and from sour-faced saints, good Lord, deliver us.”

Love makes labour light. Love alone gives value to all things.

Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds.

Love turns work into rest.

It is a great folly to be willing to violate the friendship of God, rather than the law of human friendship.

It is not a matter of thinking a great deal but of loving a great deal, so do whatever arouses you most to love.

Don’t imagine that, if you had a great deal of time, you would spend more of it in prayer. Get rid of that idea; it is no hindrance to prayer to spend your time well.

Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they enkindle and melt the soul.

It is of great importance, when we begin to practise prayer, not to let ourselves be frightened by our own thoughts.

This body of ours has one fault: the more you indulge it, the more things it discovers to be essential to it. It is extraordinary how it likes being indulged.

But the fact is, things always seem to come slowly when you are longing for them.

If this is the way You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few!

After you die, you wear what you are.

We shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavoring to know God; for, beholding His greatness we realize our own littleness; His purity shows us our foulness; and by meditating upon His humility we find how very far we are from being humble.

There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.

All the troubles of the Church, all the evils in the world, flow from this source: that men do not by clear and sound knowledge and serious consideration penetrate into the truths of Sacred Scripture.

One always goes on as one begins.