Daily quotes on developing virtue from Saints, Popes and others.
"If you long earnestly, anxiously, and persistently after what you do not possess, it is all very well to say that you do not wish to get it unfairly, but you are all the time guilty of avarice." Source: St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Random House, Inc., 2002. [...]
"Hunger, thirst, loss of worldly position, nakedness, cold, heat, insults, abuse, slander – all these things I [God] allow people to say and do to you. Not that I am the source of the malice and ill will of those who do these evil and harmful things; I only grant them their existence and time. [...]
"The world’s wealth is growing in absolute terms, but inequities are on the increase… In poorer areas, some groups enjoy a sort of 'superdevelopment' of a wasteful and consumerist kind which forms an unacceptable contrast with the ongoing situations of dehumanizing deprivation. 'The scandal of glaring inequities' continues." Source: Pope Benedict XVI, CARITAS IN [...]
"All sin is a lie. For no sin is committed save by that desire or will by which we desire that it be well with us, and shrink from it being ill with us. That, therefore, is a lie which we do in order that it may be well with us, but which makes us [...]
"Today millions of men and women consider that their happiness is destroyed if they must get along without a few things of which their grandfathers had never dreamed. Luxuries have become necessities to them; and the more things a man needs in order to be happy, the more he has increased his chances of disappointment [...]
"The chief object of the devil’s work on earth is to fill us with pride." Source: Saint Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, Dover Thrift Editions, 2012.
"Some there are who wish to serve Our Lord only on condition of being better treated than they were in the world. Oh, how many there are who demand of religion only its advantages, who enter it only to make sure of their bread, to find in it a resource, a commodious shelter! Religious nobodies! [...]
"Do not let that mind which is the likeness of God cleave to mere earthly goods; let it always be raised above them, not sunk in them." Source: St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Random House, Inc., 2002.
"Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end that provides a sense both of how to produce it and how to make good use of it. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying [...]
"Pure love is capable of great deeds, and it is not broken by difficulty or adversity. As it remains strong in the midst of great difficulties, so too it perseveres in the toilsome and drab life of each day. It knows that only one thing is needed to please God: to do even the smallest [...]