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.

There is need for a crusade of manliness and purity to counteract and undo the savage work of those who think that man is a beast.

And that crusade is a matter for you.

You, a doctor, an apostle, write to me: 'We all know by experience that we can be chaste, living vigilantly, frequenting the sacraments and stamping out the first sparks of passion before the fire can spread. And it so happens that among the chaste are found the finest men in every way. And among the lustful predominate the timid, the selfish, the treacherous and the cruel — characters of little manliness.'

The choicest morsel, if eaten by a pig, is turned (to put it bluntly), into pigflesh!

Let us be angels, so as to dignify the ideas we assimilate.

Let us at least be men, so as to convert our food into strong and noble muscles, or perhaps into a powerful brain capable of understanding and adoring God.

But let us not be beasts, like so many, so very many!

True virtue is not sad or disagreeable, but pleasantly cheerful.

Be a child. Even more so. But don't stop at the show-off stage: have you ever seen anything sillier than the little fellow playing the man, or a grown man acting like a baby?

A child, with God: and just because of that, very much a man in everything else. Ah! and drop those lap-dog manners.

Be men and women of the world, but don't be worldly men and women.

You were amazed to hear me approve of the lack of 'uniformity' in that apostolate in which you work. And I told you:

Unity and variety. You have to be different from one another, as the saints in heaven are different, each having his own personal and special characteristics. But also as alike one another as the saints, who would not be saints if each of them had not identified himself with Christ.