List of points

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.

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?

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

If you keep a check on your tongue, you will work more effectively in your apostolic undertakings — so many people let their 'strength' slip through their mouths! — and you will avoid many dangers of vainglory.

Results! Always looking for 'results'! You ask me for photographs, for facts and figures.

I won't send you what you ask, because (though I respect the opposite opinion), I would then think I had acted with a view to making good on earth, and where I want to make good is in heaven.

Deo omnis gloria. All glory to God. It is an emphatic confession of our nothingness. He, Jesus, is everything. We, without him, are worth nothing: nothing. Our vainglory would be just that: vain glory; it would be sacrilegious robbery. There should be no room for that 'I' anywhere.

Without me, you can do nothing, our Lord has told us. And he has said it so that you and I won't credit ourselves with successes that are his. Sine me, nihil!…

How can you dare use that spark of divine intelligence — your mind — in anything but in giving glory to your Lord?

If life's purpose were not to give glory to God, how contemptible, how hateful it would be.

Give 'all' the glory to God. 'Squeeze' out each one of your actions with your will aided by grace, so that there remains in them nothing that smacks of human pride, of self-complacency.

Never go into details of 'your' apostolate unless it be for someone else's benefit.