List of points

Don't waste your time and your energy — which belong to God — throwing stones at the dogs that bark at you on your way. Ignore them.

Get rid of those scruples that deprive you of peace. — What takes away your peace of soul cannot come from God.

When God comes to you, you will feel the truth of those greetings: My peace I give to you…, peace I leave you…, peace be with you…, and you will feel it even in the midst of troubles.

Get used to lifting your heart to God, in acts of thanksgiving, many times a day. Because he gives you this and that. Because you have been despised. Because you haven't what you need or because you have.

Because he made his Mother so beautiful, his Mother who is also your Mother. Because he created the sun and the moon and this animal and that plant. Because he made that man eloquent and you he left tongue-tied…

Thank him for everything, because everything is good.

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 was a failure, a disaster: because you lost our spirit. — You well know that, as long as we act from supernatural motives, the outcome (victory? defeat? bah!) has only one name: success.

What does it matter if you have the whole world against you, with all its power? You… keep going!

Repeat the words of the psalm: 'The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom need I fear? Si consistant adversum me castra, non timebit cor meum. — Though an army pitched camp against me, my heart shall not be afraid'.

All right: that person has behaved badly towards you. But, haven't you behaved worse towards God?

Jesus: wherever you have passed no heart remains indifferent. You are either loved or hated.

When an apostle follows you, carrying out his duty, is it surprising that — if he is another Christ — he should arouse similar murmurs of aversion or of love?

Once again they have spoken, they have written: in favour, against; with good and with not so good will; faint praise and slander; panegyrics and plaudits; hits and misses…

Don't be a fool! As long as you are making straight for your goal, head and heart intoxicated with God, why worry about the voice of the wind, or the chirp of the cricket, or the mooing or the grunting or the braying?

Besides, it's inevitable; don't waste time answering back.

Tongues have been wagging and you have suffered rebuffs that hurt you all the more because you were not expecting them.

Your supernatural reaction should be to pardon, — and even to ask pardon, — and to take advantage of the experience to detach yourself from creatures.

When you meet with suffering, contempt, the Cross, your thought should be: what is this compared with what I deserve?

Are things going against you? Are you going through a rough time? Say very slowly, as if relishing it, this powerful and manly prayer:

'May the most just and most lovable will of God be done, be fulfilled be praised and eternally exalted above all things. Amen, Amen.'

I assure you that you will find peace.