List of points

We often feel tempted to reserve a bit of time for ourselves alone.

Learn once and for all to remedy such meanness, by putting things right immediately.

If your imagination bubbles over with thoughts about yourself and creates fanciful situations and circumstances which would not normally find a place in your way, then these will foolishly distract you. They will dampen your ardour and separate you from the presence of God. This is vanity.

If your imagination revolves around others, you will easily fall into the defect of passing judgement when this is not your responsibility. You will interpret their behaviour not at all objectively but in a mean way. This is rash judgement.

If your imagination hovers around your own talents and ways of speaking, or with the general admiration that you inspire in others, then you will be in danger of losing your rectitude of intention, and of providing fodder for your pride.

Generally, letting your imagination loose is a waste of time, and, if it is not controlled, it opens the door to a whole string of voluntary temptations.

—Do not leave off the practice of interior mortification for even a single day!

It seems incredible that one could be so happy in this world, where so many are bent on leading sad lives because they follow their own selfishness, as if everything came to an end down here!

—Don’t you be one of them… rectify your intention all the time!

Some people don’t hear — don’t want to hear — anything other than the words they have in their own heads.

The understanding that so many people demand of others is that everyone should join their party.

I cannot believe in your truthfulness if you feel no uneasiness — a disagreeable uneasiness! — when you countenance the smallest and most harmless lie. It is far from being small or harmless for it is an offence against God.

Why do you look about you and listen and read and talk with such a mean intention, and why do you try to gather up the “bad things” to be found, not in the intention of others, but only in your own soul?

For the reader who lacks an upright intention the honesty of the writer is hard to find.

The sectarian sees only sectarianism in all the activities of others. He measures his neighbour by the sickly measure of his heart.

I felt pity for that man in office. He suspected that there might have been some problems, which are, after all, to be expected in life… yet he was taken aback and annoyed when he was told about them. He preferred to remain ignorant of them, to live in the shadow or twilight of his own vision, so that he might remain at ease.

I advised him to face up to these things openly and clearly, so that in this very way they could be got rid of. I assured him that then he would truly live in peace.

You must not solve problems, your own or those of others, by ignoring them; this would be nothing short of laziness and comfort-seeking, which would open the door to the action of the devil.

Have you fulfilled your duty? Have you had a right intention? … You have? —Then do not worry if there are twisted people who discover evil which only exists in their own minds.

Inquisitive people asked you whether you judged that decision of yours, which they considered indifferent, to be good or bad.

And, with a sure conscience, you answered: “I know only two things: that my intention is honest… and that I know how much it cost me.” And you added: God is the reason and the purpose of my life, that is why I am convinced that nothing can be indifferent.

Make sure that your good intentions are always accompanied by humility. Because good intentions often go together with harsh judgements, almost amounting to an incapacity to yield, and a certain personal, national or party pride.

It is not at all bad to behave well for upright human reasons. —But… what a difference it makes when the supernatural ones rule!

When he saw the happiness with which that hard work was being done, that friend asked: “Is it through enthusiasm that you get all these tasks done?” —And they answered him happily and calmly: “Through enthusiasm…? That would be the day! Per Dominum Nostrum Iesum Christum! — through Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is constantly awaiting us.”

You were very sorry to hear that most un-Christian comment, “Forgive your enemies: you can’t imagine how it angers them!”

—You could not keep quiet, and you replied calmly, “I don’t want to cheapen love by humiliating my neighbour. I forgive, because I love, and I am hungry to imitate the Master.”

There is a remedy for those anxieties of yours. Be patient, have rectitude of intention and look at things from a supernatural perspective.

Speaking badly of others is the daughter of envy; and envy is where the sterile seek refuge.

So, now you are faced by sterility, examine the way you see things. If you carry on working and do not get annoyed at others who are also working and obtaining results, then the sterility of your effort will merely be an apparent one. In time you will gather the harvest.