Envy is sadness at another’s good, and joy at another’s evil. What rust is to iron, what moths are to wool, what termites are to wood, that is what envy is to the soul: the assassination of brotherly love. Envy manifests itself in discord, hatred, malicious joy, backbiting, detraction, imputing evil motives, jealousy, and calumny.
–Blessed Fulton Sheen (1895-1979)
It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.
–Saint Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)
After you have made a decision that is pleasing to God, the Devil may try to make you have second thoughts. Intensify your prayer time, meditation, and good deeds. For if Satan’s temptations merely cause you to increase your efforts to grow in holiness, he’ll have an incentive to leave you alone.
–Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)
If the scandal comes from the truth, one must endure the scandal rather than conceal the truth.
–Saint Gregory the Great (590- 604)
Beginners in the service of God sometimes lose confidence when they fall into any fault. When you feel so unworthy a sentiment rising within you, you must lift your heart to God and consider that all your faults, compared with divine goodness, are less than a bit of tattered thread thrown into a sea of fire… So, when you have committed a fault, humble yourself before God, and cast your fault into the infinite ocean of, charity, and at once it will be effaced from your soul; at the same time all distrust will disappear.
–Saint Paul of the Cross (1694-1775)
Let not your imperfections discourage you; your God does not despise you because you are imperfect and infirm. On the contrary, he loves you because you desire to cure your ills. He will come to your assistance and make you more perfect than you would have dared to hope, and adorned by his Hand, your beauty will be unequalled, like his own goodness.
–Louis de Blois (1506–1566)
