List of points

How I wish your bearing and conversation were such that, on seeing or hearing you, people would say: This man reads the life of Jesus Christ.

Maturity. Stop acting the child; drop that affectation that only suits a silly girl. Let your outward conduct reflect the peace and order of your soul.

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

Don't succumb to that disease of character whose symptoms are inconstancy in everything, thoughtlessness in action and speech scatter-brained ideas: superficiality, in short.

Mark this well: unless you react in time — not tomorrow: now! — that superficiality which each day leads you to form those empty plans (plans 'so full of emptiness') will make of your life a dead and useless puppet.

You persist in being worldly, superficial, scatter-brained, because you are a coward. What is it but cowardice not to want to face yourself?

What a 'profound' way of living a life of empty follies, of getting somewhere in the world: rising, always rising, simply by 'weighing little', having nothing inside, either in your head or in your heart.

Why that fitful character? When are you going to apply your will to something definite? Drop that craze for foundation-stones, and put the finishing touch to just one of your projects.

Don't be so touchy. The least thing offends you. it's necessary to weigh one's words well before speaking to you even on the most

trivial matter.

Don't be annoyed if I tell you that you are… unbearable. Unless you change, you will never be of any use.

Hold your tongue! Don't be childish, the caricature of a child: telltale, mischief-maker, little sneak! With your stories and tales you have chilled the glow of charity: you couldn't have done more harm, and if by any chance that wagging tongue of yours has shaken the walls of other people's perseverance, your own perseverance ceases to be a grace from God, for it has become a treacherous instrument of the enemy.

You are curious and inquisitive, prying and nosey. Are you not ashamed that even in your defects you are not much of a man? Be a man: and instead of poking into other people's lives seek to acquire a true knowledge of your own.

Your manly character — simple and straightforward — is oppressed when you find yourself entangled in gossip and mischievous talk, which you cannot understand and in which you never wished to be involved. Undergo the humiliation that such talk causes you and let the experience teach you greater discretion.

My dear man: though you feel very much a child, and though you are one before God, don't be so simple as to put your brother 'on the spot' before strangers.