List of points

Don't say: 'That's the way I'm made… it's my character'. It's your lack of character: Be a man.

Get used to saying No.

Will-power. Energy. Example. What has to be done, is done… without hesitation, without more worrying.

Otherwise, Teresa of Avila would not have been Saint Teresa: nor Iñigo of Loyola, Saint Ignatius.

God and daring! 'We want Christ to reign!'

Let those very obstacles give you strength. God's grace will not fail you: 'Inter medium montium pertransibunt aquae! You shall pass through the mountains!'

Does it matter that you have to curtail your activity for the moment if afterwards, like a spring which has been compressed, you will reach incomparably farther than you ever dreamed?

Will-power. A very important quality. Don't despise little things, for by the continual practice of denying yourself again and again in such things — which are never futile or trivial — with God's grace you will add strength and resilience to your character. In that way you will first become master of yourself, and then a guide, a chief, a leader: to compel and to urge and to inspire others, with your word, with your example, with your knowledge and with your power.

It is inevitable that you should feel the rub of other people's characters against your own. After all, you are not a gold coin that everyone likes.

Besides, without that friction produced by contact with others, how would you ever lose those corners, those edges and projections — the imperfections and defects — of your character, and acquire the smooth and regular finish, the firm flexibility of charity, of perfection?

If your character and the characters of those who live with you were soft and sweet like sponge-cake you would never become a saint.

Be firm. Be virile. Be a man. And then… be a saint.

You lack strength of character: what insistence on having a hand in everything! You are bent on being the salt of every dish. And — you won't be annoyed if I speak clearly — you have little aptitude for being salt: in particular, you lack its capacity to dissolve and pass unnoticed.

You have too little spirit of sacrifice and too great a spirit of curiosity and ostentation.

'One must compromise' I Compromise is a word found only in the vocabulary of those who have no will to fight — the lazy, the cunning, the cowardly — for they consider themselves defeated before they start.

The spotless purity of John's whole life makes him strong before the Cross. The other apostles fly from Golgotha: he, with the Mother of Christ, remains.

Don't forget that purity strengthens and invigorates the character.

Tender, soft, flabby…: that's not the way I want you. It's about time you got rid of that peculiar pity you feel for yourself

If you realize that your body is your enemy, and an enemy of God's glory, since it is an enemy of your sanctification, why do you treat it so softly?