Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat.
It is so much more difficult to live with one's body than with one's soul. One's body is so much more exacting: what it won't have it won't have, and nothing can make bitter into sweet.
If bodies please thee, praise God on occasion of them, and turn back thy love upon their Maker; lest in these things which please thee, thou displease. If souls please thee, be they loved in God: for they too are mutable, but in Him they are firmly established.
When he has seen, that it is not his, nor any man's, but it is the soul which made the world, and that it is all accessible to him, he will know that he, as its minister, may rightfully hold all things subordinate and answerable to it.
Body and spirit I surrendered whole To harsh instructors and received a soul... If mortal man could change me through and through From all I was What may the God not do?
Nothing is more stimulating and more salutary to (or for) the inner (or inward) development than the exemple of men devoted to the good. It is in the company of men pursuing a same ideal that the still weavering (or unsteady) soul can set oneself ("se fixer", Fr) and stick to (or attach to) everything that is noble and generous.
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
[This miserable mode
Maintain the melancholy souls of those
Who lived withouten infamy or praise.]