"I do think God made use of [this dream] to show me that a soul in the state of grace need never be afraid of the devil, who is such a coward that even the gaze of a child will frighten him away" (13).
"That same evening, when the sun appeared to be sinking into the vast stretch of the waters beyond a golden path of light, I went with you to sit upon a lonely rock. I gazed for ages on this path of light, and you said it was an image of the path to Heaven when grace lights the way.
Then I thought of my heart as a tiny ship with white and graceful sails gliding down the middle of a path of gold, and I resolved that I would never sail it out of sight of Jesus, so that it might voyage swiftly and in peace toward the shores of Heaven" (26-27).
"It was at this time that I was given what I have always considered one of my life's greatest graces, for God did not enlighten me then in the way He does now. He taught me that the only glory which matters is the glory which lasts forever and that one does not have to perform shining deeds to win that, but to hide one's acts of virtue from others" (40).
"[E]ven though I had been thinking for so long about my First Communion, I had to renew by ardor and fill my heart with freshly gathered flowers. So every day, I made many sacrifices and acts of love, which were transformed into flowers; some were violets and roses, others cornflowers and daisies or forget-me-nots. I wanted all the flowers on earth to cradle Jesus in my heart" (41).
"I see now that true charity consists in bearing with the faults of those about us, never being surprised at their weaknesses, but edified at the least sign of virtue.... Should the devil draw my attention to the faults of any one of them when I am seeking to increase this love in my heart, I call to mind at once her virtues and her good intentions. I tell myself that though I may have seen her fall once, there are probably a great many other occasions on which she has won victories which, in her humility, she has kept to herself. What may appear to me to be a fault may even be an act of virtue because of her intention, and as I have experienced this for myself, I have little difficulty in persuading myself that this indeed the case" (126-27).
"'If my little acts of virtue can be mistaken for imperfections, imperfections can just as easily be mistaken for virtue'" (127).
"And I am not distressed when my helplessness is brought home to me; on the contrary, I make it my boast and expect each day to reveal some imperfection which I had not seen before. This enlightenment on my nothingness does me more good, in fact, than enlightenment on matters of faith" (132).
"[T]rue love feeds on sacrifice and becomes more pure and strong the more our natural satisfaction is denied" (136).
"I have noticed that the most saintly nuns are the most loved; everyone wants to be with them and to do little things for them without waiting to be asked. And I have noticed lastly that those who do not mind whether they get attention and respect or not, find themselves surrounded by every kind of love. One might apply the words of St. John of the Cross to them: 'All good things have been granted me since I no longer seek them out of selfishness'" (144).
"'Give me a fulcrum,' said Archimedes, 'and with a lever I will move the world.' He was asking the impossible, and yet this is just what the Saints have been given. Their fulcrum is none other than Almighty God Himself; their lever, prayer, the prayer which enkindles the fire of love. It is with this lever that they have uplifted the world, and with this lever those who are still fighting in the world will go on raising it until the End of Time" (153).
"All that remains for me to tell you now is what the sweet odor of the Beloved means to me. Since Jesus has gone to Heaven now, I can only follow the traces He has left behind. But how bright these traces are! How fragrant and divine! I have only to glance at the Gospels; at once this fragrance from the life of Jesus reaches me, and I know which way to run: the lowest, not the highest place!" (154).
"Jesus had chosen to show me the only way which leads to the Divine Furnace of love; it is the way of childlike self-surrender, the way of a child who sleeps, afraid of nothing, in its father's arms" (158).
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