Quotes from Ignatius of Loyola

God our Lord would have us look to the Giver and love Him more than His gift, keeping Him always before our eyes, in our hearts, and in our thoughts.

Considering that the blessed life we so long for consists in an intimate and true love of God Our Creator and Lord, which binds and obliges us all to a sincere love.

Truth always ends by victory; it is not unassailable, but invincible.

So with that will prompt and prepared to serve all those whom I perceive to be servants of my Lord, I will speak of three things with simplicity and love as if I were speaking to my own soul.

What seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical Church so defines.

Sin is unwillingness to trust that what God wants for me is only my deepest happiness.

To conquer himself is the greatest victory that man can gain.

If one fears men much he will never do anything great for God: all that one does for God arouses persecution.

They who load us with insults and ignominies give us the means of acquiring treasures more precious than any that man can gain in this life.

Let us work as if success depended upon ourselves alone, but with heartfelt conviction that we are doing nothing, and God everything.

Laugh and grow strong

Teach us to give and not to count the cost.

If our church is not marked by caring for the poor, the oppressed, the hungry, we are guilty of heresy.

For it is not knowing much, but realising and relishing things interiorly, that contents and satisfies the soul.

He learned by experience that one train of thought left him sad, the other joyful. This was his first reasoning on spiritual matters.

Ite, inflammate omnia.

Up to his twenty-sixth year the heart of Ignatius was enthralled by the vanities of the world. His special delight was in the military life, and he seemed led by a strong and empty desire of gaining for himself a great name.

Next it dawned on him that the former ideas were of the world, the latter God-sent; finally, worldly thoughts began to lose their hold, while heavenly ones grew clearer and dearer.

if it happens that the soul is attached or inclined to a thing inordinately, that one should move himself, putting forth all his strength, to come to the contrary of what he is wrongly drawn to.

Fifth Rule. The fifth: In time of desolation never to make a change; but to be firm and constant in the resolutions and determination in which one was the day preceding such desolation, or in the determination in which he was in the preceding consolation. Because, as in consolation it is rather the good spirit who guides and counsels us, so in desolation it is the bad, with whose counsels we cannot take a course to decide rightly.

En los que proceden de bien en mejor, el buen ángel toca a la tal ánima dulce, leve y suavemente, como gota de agua que entra en una esponja; y el malo toca agudamente y con sonido y inquietud, como cuando la gota de agua cae sobre la piedra. Y a los que proceden de mal en peor tocan los sobredichos espíritus contrario modo.

A thick and shapeless trunk would never believe that it could become a statue, admired as a miracle of sculpture, and would never consent to submit itself to the chisel of the sculptor who sees by his genius what he can make of it.

Todo buen cristiano ha de ser más pronto a salvar la proposición del prójimo que a condenarla; y, si no la puede salvar, inquira cómo la entiende; y, si mal la entiende, corríjale con amor; y, si no basta, busque todos los medios convenientes para que, bien entendiéndola, se salve.

Among some of the famous men educated by the Jesuits we find Bossuet, Corneille, Molière, Tasso, Fontenelle, Diderot, Voltaire, and Bourdaloue, himself a Jesuit.