However small the sins that you may confess may be, always have sincere sorrow for them, together with a firm resolution to correct them in the future. Many who confess their venial sins out of custom and concern for order, but without thought of amendment, remain burdened with them for their whole lives and thus lose many spiritual benefits and advantages.
–Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
Your language should be restrained, frank, sincere, candid, unaffected and honest. Be on guard against equivocation, ambiguity or dissimulation. While it is not always advisable to say everything that is true, it is never permissible to speak against the truth. You must become accustomed never to tell a deliberate lie whether to excuse yourself or for some other purposes, remembering always that God is the ‘God of truth.’
–Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
To mutter something with the lips is not praying if one’s heart is not joined to it. To speak it is necessary first to have conceived interiorly what we wish to say. There is first the interior word, and then the spoken word, which causes what the interior has first pronounced to be understood. Prayer is nothing other than speaking to God. Now it is certain that to speak to God without being attentive to Him and to what we say to Him is something that is most displeasing to Him…God tests more the heart of the one who prays rather than the words pronounced by one who prays.
–Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
The devil is a great chained dog which puts people to flight, which makes a great noise, but which only bites those who come too close.
–Saint John Vianney (1786-1859)
Won’t you agree with me that, if we do not receive what we ask God for, it is because we do not pray with faith, with a sufficiently pure heart, with enough trust, or because we do not persevere in prayer as we should? God has never denied and never will deny anything to those who ask for his graces in the right way.
–Saint John Vianney (1786-1859)
Have you not often met poor old women who are most faithful to the pious recitation of the Rosary? You also must do all that you can to recite it with fervor. Get right down, at the feet of Jesus: it is a good thing to make oneself small in the presence of so great a God.
–Blessed Columba Marmion (1858-1923)
