List of points

It is inevitable that you should feel the rub of other people's characters against your own. After all, you are not a gold coin that everyone likes.

Besides, without that friction produced by contact with others, how would you ever lose those corners, those edges and projections — the imperfections and defects — of your character, and acquire the smooth and regular finish, the firm flexibility of charity, of perfection?

If your character and the characters of those who live with you were soft and sweet like sponge-cake you would never become a saint.

Be firm. Be virile. Be a man. And then… be a saint.

When you resolve firmly to lead a clean life, chastity will not be a burden for you: it will be a triumphal crown.

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.

Way of childhood. Abandonment. Spiritual infancy. All this is not utter nonsense, but a sturdy and solid christian life.

In the spiritual life of childhood the things 'children' say or do are never puerile or childish.

Spiritual childhood is not spiritual foolishness or flabbiness; it is a sane and forceful way which, due to its difficult easiness, the soul must begin and continue, led by the hand of God.

Be a child. Even more so. But don't stop at the show-off stage: have you ever seen anything sillier than the little fellow playing the man, or a grown man acting like a baby?

A child, with God: and just because of that, very much a man in everything else. Ah! and drop those lap-dog manners.

When I call you 'good child' don't think I imagine you timid or bashful. If you are not manly and normal, instead of being an apostle you will be a caricature that causes laughter.

Let your prayer be manly. To be a child does not mean to be effeminate.