If We Had Strength And Faith Enough

Carefully Purify Your Conscience From Daily Faults; Suffer No Sin To Dwell In Your Heart; Small As It May Seem, It Obscures The Light Of Grace, Weighs Down The Soul, And Hinders That Constant Communion With Jesus Christ Which It Should Be Your Pleasure To Cultivate.

I Had Often Heard Mentor Say, That The Voluptuous Were Never Brave, And I Now Found By Experience That It Was True; For The Cyprians Whose Jollity Had Been So Extravagant And Tumultuous, Now Sunk Under A Sense Of Their Danger And Wept Like Women. I Heard Nothing But The Screams Of Terror And The Wailings Of Hopeless Distress. Some Lamented The Loss Of Pleasures That Were Never To Return; But None Had Presence Of Mind Either To Undertake Or Direct The Navigation Of The Menaced Vessel.

To Pray Is To Desire; But It Is To Desire What God Would Have Us Desire.

Violent Excitement Exhausts The Mind And Leaves It Withered And Sterile.

Nothing Is More False And More Indiscreet Than Always To Want To Choose What Mortifies Us In Everything. By This Rule A Person Would Soon Ruin His Health, His Business, His Reputation, His Relations With His Relatives And Friends, In Fact Every Good Work Which Providence Gives Him.