List of points

Do you want to know how to be frank and simple? Listen to these words of Peter and meditate on them: Domine, Tu omnia nosti… —Lord, You know all things!

Abyssus, abyssum invocat… — deep is calling on deep, as I have already reminded you. It is the exact description of how liars, hypocrites, renegades, and traitors behave. As they are disgusted with their own behaviour, they hide their misdeeds from others and go from bad to worse, creating an abyss between themselves and their neighbour.

The pedant interprets the simplicity and humility of the learned as ignorance.

Don’t be one of those people who, when they receive an order, immediately begin to think about how to change it… —We might say they have too much “personality”, and they cause disunity or ruin.

Experience, great knowledge of the world, being able to read between the lines, an exaggerated sharpness, a critical spirit… All those things, in your business and social relations, have led you too far, to such an extent that you have become a bit cynical. All that “excessive realism”, which is a lack of supernatural spirit, has even invaded your interior life. —Through failing to be simple, you have become at times cold and unfeeling.

At heart you are a good chap, but you fancy yourself as a Machiavelli. —Remember that to enter into Heaven you have to be a good and honest man, not a tiresome little intriguer.

You are unworthy, are you? —Well… try to become worthy. And let that be the end of it.

How you long to be extraordinary! —The trouble with such an ambition is how very vulgar it is.

In one move, you have tried to appropriate the “honesty” of the true opinion and the ignoble “advantages” of the opposite opinion…

—That, in any language, is called duplicity.

The appearance is that of strength and resilience. —But how much softness and lack of willpower there is within!

—You must hold to your determination not to let your virtues become fancy dress but clothes which define your character.

Do you object to my repeating in the same way the same essential things without taking into account the latest fashionable trends? —Look, a straight line has been defined in the same way for centuries, because it is the clearest and briefest definition. Other definitions would be more obscure and complicated.

A young man who had just given himself more fully to God said: “What I need to do now is speak less, visit the sick and sleep on the floor.”

—Apply that to yourself.