If our Savior himself has declared: “By your endurance you will gain your souls,” should it not be a man's great happiness to possess his soul? The more perfect our patience, the more absolutely do we possess it. Let us frequently call to mind that as our Lord has saved us by patient suffering, so we also ought to work out our salvation by sufferings and afflictions; enduring injuries and contradictions with all possible meekness.
ST. FRANCIS DE SALES
Many appear full of mildness and sweetness as long as everything goes their own way; but the moment any contradiction or adversity arises, they are in a flame, and begin to rage like a burning mountain. Such people as these are like red-hot coals hidden under ashes. This is not the mildness which Our Lord undertook to teach us in order to make us like unto Himself.
ST. BERNARD
It is not those who commit the least faults who are the most holy, but those who have the greatest courage, the greatest generosity, the greatest love, who make the boldest efforts to overcome themselves, and are not immoderately apprehensive of tripping.
ST. FRANCIS DE SALES
A person who governs his passions is master of the world. We must either rule them, or be ruled by them. It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
ST. DOMINIC
As the world needs poets, priests, dancers, dreamers, artists, singers, prophets—all of them devotees of sign and symbol—so too [it needs] monks who live in touch with reality. This in turn becomes both model and inspiration for all caught in the materiality of the material, out of touch with the hidden glory that is all around us.
MATTHEW KELTY My Song is of Mercy
True virtue has no limits, but goes on and on, and especially holy charity, which is the virtue of virtues, and which having a definite object, would become infinite if it could meet with a heart capable of infinity.
SAINT FRANCIS DE SALES