List of points

Get used to saying No.

You lack strength of character: what insistence on having a hand in everything! You are bent on being the salt of every dish. And — you won't be annoyed if I speak clearly — you have little aptitude for being salt: in particular, you lack its capacity to dissolve and pass unnoticed.

You have too little spirit of sacrifice and too great a spirit of curiosity and ostentation.

'One must compromise' I Compromise is a word found only in the vocabulary of those who have no will to fight — the lazy, the cunning, the cowardly — for they consider themselves defeated before they start.

War! 'War', you tell me, 'has a supernatural end that the world is unaware of: war has been for us…'

War is the greatest obstacle to the easy way. But in the end we will have to love it, as the religious should love his disciplines.

That false humility is laziness. Such humbleness is a handy way of giving up rights that are really duties.

If you accept difficulties with a faint heart you lose your joy and your peace, and you run the risk of not deriving spiritual profit from the trial.