List of points

Why are you hurt by what people say about you? How much worse you would be if God were to leave you. Persevere in doing good, and shrug your shoulders.

You are curious and inquisitive, prying and nosey. Are you not ashamed that even in your defects you are not much of a man? Be a man: and instead of poking into other people's lives seek to acquire a true knowledge of your own.

Give thanks, as for a very special favour, for that holy abhorrence you feel for yourself.

Make this firm and determined resolution: to recall, when you receive honours and praise, all that brings a blush of shame to your cheek.

The shame is yours; the praise and glory, God's.

A change! You say you need a change!… opening your eyes wide so as to take in better the images of things, or almost closing them because you are short-sighted.

Close them altogether! Have interior life, and you will see, in undreamt-of colour and relief, the wonders of a better world, of a new world: and you will draw close to God…, and know your weakness…, and be deified… with a deification which, by bringing you nearer to your Father, will make you more a brother of your fellow-men.

Forget that despair produced by the realization of your weakness. — True: financially you are a zero, in social standing another zero, and another in virtues, and another in talent.

But to the left of these noughts, stands Christ. And what an incalculable figure we get!

When you hear your success being applauded, let there also sound in your ears the laughter you provoked with your failures.

Don't wish to be like the gilded weather-cock on top of a great building: however much it shines, and however high it stands, it adds nothing to the solidity of the building.

Rather be like an old stone block hidden in the foundations, underground, where no one can see you: because of you the house will not fall.

The more I am exalted, Jesus, the more I want you to humble me in my heart, showing me what I have been, and what I will be if you leave me.

Don't forget that you are a… dust-bin. That's why if by any chance the divine Gardener lays his hands on you, and scrubs and cleans you, and fills you with magnificent flowers, neither the scent nor the colour that embellish your ugliness should make you proud.

Humble yourself: don't you know that you are the rubbish bin?

The day you see yourself as you are, you will think it natural to be despised by others.

If you knew yourself, you would find joy in being despised and your heart would weep before honours and praise.

If you were to obey the impulses of your heart and the dictates of reason, you would always be flat on the ground, prostrate, like a

filthy worm, ugly and miserable, before that God who puts up with so much from you.

You… proud? About what?