Quotes About Reflection

The saint shows (Hom. 86, p. 810) the malice and danger of small faults wilfully committed, which many are apt to make slight of; but from such the most dreadful falls take their rise.

329 A maxim which he frequently repeats is, that the knowledge of ourselves is the necessary and only step by which we can ascend to the knowledge and love of God.

As the great work of the sanctification of our souls is to be begun by humility, so must it be completed by the same

There is no preparation for a good death but a good life.

The virtue of this great saint was often exercised with temptations. One was a suggestion to quit his desert and go to Rome, to serve the sick in the hospitals; which, by due reflection, he discovered to be a secret artifice of vain-glory inciting him to attract the eyes and esteem of the world. True humility alone could discover the snare which lurked under the specious gloss of holy charity

As much as the heavens exceed the earth, so much larger is the field of spiritual meditation than that of all terrestrial concerns.

Three things destroy a man: considering his own deeds to be really great, forgetting the sins that have been committed, considering his own opinion to be the highest.

Consider the world as an abode where in you have dropped down for an hour, then you have got to leave it and go ahead; or (suppose it is) like the wealth which you lay hands upon in a dream and become over-joyed and glad. Then you wake up to find yourself empty handed.

Opposition of one's desires is the sign of the highest level of wisdom in a human being.

When life has been well spent; when there is a conscience without reproach; when there is faith in the Saviour; when there is a well-founded hope of heaven, there can be nothing that should disquiet us.

We can always find something to be thankful for, and there may be reasons why we ought to be thankful for even those dispensations which appear dark and frowning.

This is the way that I think about my life, and I hope that you'll think of your life too. You should think about your life hoping that there will be many moments in it about which you can say; There is no place I'd rather be, there is no thing I'd rather be doing, there is nobody I'd rather be with, & this I will remember well.

Maybe taking ourselves for somebody else means that we cannot bear to see ourselves as we are.

I've been to many funerals of funny people, and they're some of the funniest days you'll ever have, because the emotions run high.

the end of your praying is not to inform God, as though he knew not your wants already; but rather to inform yourselves, to

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it.

I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.

You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

It's no use reminding yourself daily that you are mortal: it will be brought home to you soon enough.

I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

Life is the sum of all your choices.