I cannot tell you how much alms have diminished here and the difficulty of finding any loans. Everyone is being affected by the misery of the age (II:171).

I beg Our Lord to reward you and to increase His love in you (II:169).

How good God is to those who detach themselves from the affections of the world to unite themselves to Him (II:160).

Zeal which goes outside the enclosure of love of the neighbor is no longer zeal, but the passion of antipathy (II:157).

All those things are nothing but exercises for your purgation, illumination, and perfection, and so that you can sympathize with those whom you see in similar dispositions. It is God's plan that those who are to help others spiritually fall into the temptation of mind...

On God's road, not to advance is to fall back since one never remains in the same condition (II:146).

Perfection consists in a constant perseverance to acquire the virtues and become proficient in their practice (II:146).

Always remember that in the spiritual life little account is taken of the beginnings. People attach importance to the progress and the end (II:146).

Have great confidence in God, really give yourself to Him so that he may direct you and be Himself the Superior (II:140).

Let us set about stripping ourselves entirely of affection for anything that is not God, be attached to things only for God and according to God, and let us seek and establish His kingdom first of all in ourselves, and then in others (II:122).