List of points

Get used to saying No.

That joke, that witty remark held on the tip of your tongue; the cheerful smile for those who annoy you; that silence when you're unjustly accused; your friendly conversation with people whom you find boring and tactless; the daily effort to overlook one irritating detail or another in the persons who live with you… this, with perseverance, is indeed solid interior mortification.

Don't say: 'That person gets on my nerves.' Think: 'That person sanctifies me.'

Don't waste the opportunity of yielding your own judgment. It's hard…, but how pleasing it is in the eyes of God!

Interior mortification. I don't believe in your interior self-denial if I see that you despise, that you do not practise, mortification of the senses.

A soul whose immediate superior was a rough and irritable type was moved by God to say: 'Thank you, my God, for this truly divine treasure: where could I find another who gives a kick for every kindness?'

Don't make negative criticism: if you can't praise, say nothing.

Never speak badly of your brother, not even when you have plenty of reasons. Go first to the Tabernacle, and then go to the priest your father, and tell him also what is worrying you.

And no one else.

Gossip is a disease that infects and poisons the apostolate. It goes against charity, means a waste of energy, takes away peace and destroys one's union with God.

After seeing how many people waste their lives, their whole lives (tongues wagging, wagging, wagging, and all the inevitable consequences), silence seems preferable to me, and more necessary than ever.

And I well understand, Lord, why we have to give an account of all our idle words.

It's easier said than done. With that cutting, hatchet-like tongue, have you ever tried, even by chance, to do 'well' what, according to your 'considered' opinion, others do less well?

Call it by its name: grumbling, gossiping, back-biting, mischief making, tale-bearing, scandal-mongering, intrigue…, slander…, treachery?

Self-appointed critics sitting in judgment easily end up as 'gossiping old maids'!