1 – There is nothing so great as the Eucharist. If God had something more precious, He would have given it to us.
2 – Do not try to please everybody. Try to please God, the angels, and the saints – they are your public.
3 – We put pride into everything like salt. We like to see that our good works are known. If our virtues are seen, we are pleased; if our faults are perceived, we are sad. I remark that in a great many people; if one says anything to them, it disturbs them, it annoys them. The saints were not like that – they were vexed if their virtues were known, and pleased that their imperfections should be seen.
4 – Only after the Last Judgment will Mary get any rest; from now until then, she is much too busy with her children.
5 – Humility is like a pair of scales: the lower one side falls, the higher rises the other. Let us humble ourselves like the Blessed Virgin and we shall be exalted.
6 – The virtue of obedience makes the will supple… It inspires the courage with which to fulfill the most difficult tasks.
7 – On the Way of the Cross, you see, my children, only the first step is painful. Our greatest cross is the fear of crosses. . . We have not the courage to carry our cross, and we are very much mistaken; for, whatever we do, the cross holds us tight – we cannot escape from it. What, then, have we to lose? Why not love our crosses, and make use of them to take us to heaven?
8 – You either belong wholly to the world or wholly to God.
9 – The Lord is more anxious to forgive our sins than a woman is to carry her baby out of a burning building.
10 – If you invoke the Blessed Virgin when you are tempted, she will come at once to your help, and Satan will leave you.
11 – A priest goes to Heaven or a priest goes to Hell with a thousand people behind.
12 – I thought a time would come when people would rout me out of Ars with sticks, when the Bishop would suspend me, and I should end my days in prison. I see, however, that I am not worthy of such a grace.
13 – My little children, your hearts, are small, but prayer stretches them and makes them capable of loving God. Through prayer we receive a foretaste of heaven and something of paradise comes down upon us. Prayer never leaves us without sweetness. It is honey that flows into the souls and makes all things sweet. When we pray properly, sorrows disappear like snow before the sun.
14 – Put a good bunch of grapes under the winepress, and a delicious juice will come out. Under the winepress of the cross, our soul produces a juice that feeds and strengthens us. When we haven’t got any crosses, we are dry. If we carry them with resignation, what happiness, what sweetness we feel!
15 – We ought to run after crosses as the miser runs after money. . . Nothing but crosses will reassure us at the Day of Judgment When that day shall come, we shall be happy in our misfortunes, proud of our humiliations, and rich in our sacrifices!
16 – The first thing about the angels that we ought to imitate, is their consciousness of the Presence of God.
17 – Yes, my dear children, everything is good and precious in God’s sight when we act from the motives of religion and of charity because Jesus Christ tells us that a glass of water would not go unrewarded. You see, therefore, my children, that although we may be quite poor, we can still easily give alms.
18 – It is always springtime in the heart that loves God.
19 – The man of impure speech is a person whose lips are but an opening and a supply pipe which hell uses to vomit its impurities upon the earth.
20 – Envy, my children, follows pride; whoever is envious is proud. See, envy comes to us from Hell; the devils having sinned through pride, sinned also through envy, envying our glory, our happiness. Why do we envy the happiness and the goods of others? Because we are proud; we should like to be the sole possessors of talents, riches, of the esteem and love of all the world! We hate our equals, because they are our equals; our inferiors, from the fear that they may equal us; our superiors, because they are above us.
21 – The Devil writes down our sins – our Guardian Angel all our merits. Labor that the Guardian Angel’s book may be full, and the Devil’s empty.
22 – Private prayer is like straw scattered here and there: If you set it on fire it makes a lot of little flames. But gather these straws into a bundle and light them, and you get a mighty fire, rising like a column into the sky; public prayer is like that.
23 – If people would do for God what they do for the world, what a great number of Christians would go to Heaven.
24 – All that we do without offering it to God is wasted.
25 – See, my children, a person who is in a state of sin is always sad. Whatever he does, he is weary and disgusted with every thing; while he who is at peace with God is always happy, always joyous. . . Oh, beautiful life! Oh, beautiful death!
