List of points

Don't succumb to that disease of character whose symptoms are inconstancy in everything, thoughtlessness in action and speech scatter-brained ideas: superficiality, in short.

Mark this well: unless you react in time — not tomorrow: now! — that superficiality which each day leads you to form those empty plans (plans 'so full of emptiness') will make of your life a dead and useless puppet.

If you don't get up at a fixed time you will never carry out your plan of life.

Conquer yourself each day from the very first moment, getting up on the dot, at a fixed time, without yielding a single minute to laziness.

If, with God's help, you conquer yourself, you will be well ahead for the rest of the day.

It's so discouraging to find oneself beaten at the first skirmish!

The heroic minute. It is the time fixed for getting up. Without hesitation: a supernatural reflection and… up! The heroic minute: here you have a mortification that strengthens your will and does no harm to your body.

Do your duty 'now', without looking back on 'yesterday', which has already passed, or worrying over 'to-morrow', which may never come for you.