True patience is to suffer the wrongs done to us by others in an unruffled spirit and without feeling resentment. Patience bears with others because it loves them; to bear with them and yet to hate them is not the virtue of patience but a smokescreen for anger.
— Saint Gregory the Great (c. 540-604)
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1890-1944)
To be little in his sight is not enough; we must be nothing– this is the foundation upon which he would build… The greater our annihilation, the loftier the building he erects thereon.
–Saint Jane Frances de Chantal (1572-1641)
What God asks is a will which will no longer be divided between Him and any creature, a will pliant in His hands, which neither desires anything nor refuses anything, which wants without reservation everything which He wants, and which never, under any pretext, wants anything which He does not want.
–François Fénèlon (1651-1715)
Abandonment is the casting off of all selfish care, that we may be altogether at the Divine Disposal.
–Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717)
Indeed, having no other choice, but that up ardently reaching after Him, of dwelling ever with Him, and in sinking into nothingness before Him, we should accept indiscriminately all His dispensations, whether obscurity or illumination, fruitfulness or barrenness, weakness or strength, sweetness or bitterness, temptations, distractions, pain, weariness, or doubts; and none of these should, for one moment, retard our course.
–Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717)
