St. Philip Neri said.....

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"When we go to confession, we ought to persuade ourselves to find Jesus Christ in the person of our confessor."

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"Give me ten men really detached from the world, and I have the heart to believe I could convert the world with them."

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"He who communicates often, as he ought to do, brings forth good fruit: the fruit of humility, the fruit of patience, the fruit of all the virtues."

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"Penitents ought not to go to confession for temporal ends, to get alms and the like."

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"We ought to make no account of an immodest person, notwithstanding that he may possess other virtues."

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"The Holy Spirit says of prelates and pastors: He who hears and obeys his superiors, hears and obeys Me, and he who despises them, despises and disobeys Me."

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"If the servant of God would fain walk with more security through so many snares scattered in every place, he should have our Blessed Lady as his mediatrix with her Son."

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"The sick man may desire to get well, provided he seals his desire always with an 'If it please God,' 'If it is good for my soul;' for we can do many good things in health, which sickness hinders us from doing."

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"In sickness we ought to ask God to give us patience, because it often happens, that when a man gets well, he not only does not do the good he proposed to do when he was sick, but he multiplies his sins and his ingratitude."

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"The mole is a blind rat, which always stays in the ground; it eats earth, and hollows it out, but is never satisfied with it: so is the avaricious man or woman."

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"Penitents should never make vows without the advice of their spiritual fathers."

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If we do make such vows, it is best to make them conditionally: for example, "I make a vow to have two Masses said on St. Lucy's day, with this bargain, If I can, If I do not forget it, because if I do not remember it I do not wish to be bound."

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When a man has to buy anything, he ought not to do so because he is moved by an attachment to the thing, but from want and necessity; for it will never do to buy attachments.

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Certain little voluntary attachments of self-love must be cut through, and then we must dig round them, and then remove the earth, till we get down deep enough to find the place where they are rooted and interlaced together.

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A person must be ready to endure, when through a virtuous motive he is mortified by others, and even when God permits him to be in bad odor with others, and regarded and driven away as an infected sheep.