St. Philip Neri said.....

[Denise]

"Avoid every kind of singularity, for it is generally the hot-bed of pride, especially spiritual pride."

[Denise]

"A man must not, however, abstain from doing a good work merely to get out of the way of a temptation to vain-glory."

[Denise]

"The love of God makes us do great things."

[Denise]

"We may distinguish three kinds of vain-glory: the first we may call mistress; that is, when vain-glory goes before our works, and we work for the sake of it; the second we may call companion; that is, when a man does not do a work for the sake of vain-glory, but feels complacency in doing it; the third we may call servant; that is, when vain-glory rises in our work, but we instantly repress it. Above all things never let vain-glory be mistress."

[Denise]

"When vain-glory is companion, it does not take away our merit; but perfection requires that it should be servant."

[Denise]

"He who works purely for the love of God, desires nothing but His honor, and thus is ready in every thing either to act or not to act, and that not in indifferent matters only, but even in good ones; and he is always resigned to the Will of God."

[Denise]

"The Lord grants in a moment what we may have been unable to obtain in dozens of years."

[Denise]

"To obtain perfectly the gift of humility, four things are required: to despise the world, to despise no person, to despise one's self, to despise being despised."

[Denise]

"Perfection consists in leading captive our own will, and in playing the king over it."

[Denise]

"A man ought to mortify his understanding in little things, if he wishes easily to mortify it in great ones, and to advance in the way of virtue."

[Denise]

"Without mortification nothing can be done."

[Denise]

"We ought to hope for and love the glory of God by means of a good life."

[Denise]

"St. Peter and the other apostles and apostolic men, seeing the Son of God born in poverty, and then living so absolutely without anything, that He had nowhere to lay His Head, and contemplating Him dead and naked on a cross, stripped themselves also of all things, and took the road of the evangelical counsels."

[Denise]

"Nothing unites the soul to God more closely, or breeds contempt of the world sooner, than being harassed and distressed."

[Denise]

"In this life there is no purgatory; it is either hell or paradise; for to him who serves God truly, every trouble and infirmity turns into consolations, and through all kinds of trouble he has a paradise within himself even in this world; and he who does not serve God truly, and gives himself up to sensuality, has one hell in this world, and another in the next."