The Way

Gold, silver, jewels: dust, heaps of manure. Gratification, sensual pleasures, satisfaction of the appetites: like a beast, like a mule, like a cock, like a pig, like a bull. Honours, distinctions, titles: things of air, puffs of pride, lies, nothingness.

All the things of this world are no more than earth. Place them in a heap under your feet and you will be so much the nearer to heaven.

You are too calculating. Don't tell me you are young. Youth gives all it can: it gives itself without reserve.

True virtue is not sad or disagreeable, but pleasantly cheerful.

First, prayer; then, atonement; in the third place, very much 'in the third place', action.