Progress everyday in love and in the virtues; if you stop, you will go backwards… Work without ceasing and often examine at what point you have reached: the means of knowing whether you are progressing in the love of God and in all virtues, consists in seeing whether you are growing in love of your neighbor and in humility… If you are growing in these two things, it is certain proof that you are also growing in all perfection.
–Blessed Charles De Foucauld (1858-1916)
As God illumines all people equally with the light of the sun, so do those who desire to imitate God let shine an equal ray of love on all people. For wherever love disappears, hatred immediately appears in its place. And if God is love, then hatred is the devil. Therefore as one who has love has God within himself, so he who has hatred within himself nurtures the devil within himself.
–Saint Basil the Great (329-379)
You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves.
–Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
We must love our neighbor as being made in the image of God and as an object of His love.
–Saint Vincent de Paul (1581-1660)
Our Lord wishes us to have great charity for our neighbor, for whom we should pray as for ourselves; it is one of the characteristic effects of this devotion to reconcile hearts and to bring peace to souls.
–Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690)
We must love our fellows, without expecting friendship from them; they leave us and return, they go and come; let them do as they will; it is but a feather, the sport of the wind. See God only in them; it is He that afflicts or consoles us, by means of them, according as we have need.
–François Fénèlon (1651-1715)
