List of points

How are you going to get out of that state of lukewarmness and lamentable languor if you do not make use of the means? You struggle very little, and when you make an effort, you do so as if annoyed and uneasy. You even seem to hope that your feeble efforts will produce no results, so that you can then justify yourself and you will not have to make demands on yourself and others will not ask any more of you.

—It is your own will you are following, not God’s. If you don’t change in earnest you will neither be happy nor be able to obtain the peace you now lack.

—Humble yourself before God, and try really to want to.

Beatus vir qui suffert tentationem… Blessed is the man who suffers temptation because, after he has been tested, he will receive the crown of Life.

Is your heart filled with joy when you realise that this interior sport is a source of peace which can never be exhausted?

How can you be at peace if you allow passions you do not even attempt to control to drag you away from the “pull” of grace?

Heaven pulls you upwards; you — only you, and don’t seek excuses! — downwards… —If you go on like that you will tear yourself apart.

We have both peace and war within us.

Victory and peace cannot be attained if loyalty and resolve to win the combat are lacking.