Words

It is fortunate that Elizabeth lived in an era when personal journals and extensive correspondence were commonplace. She chronicled the various phases of her life with simplicity and clarity and created a storehouse of historical information and spiritual edification. On one hand, her agile mind, impetuosity and high energy are revealed in her crisp epigrams, stenographic style, and run-on sentences; on the other, her thoughtful spiritual reflections are nuanced through subordination and imagery.

Relationships

You will help others more by the peace and tranquility of your heart than by any eagerness or care you can bestow on them.

Writing and translating, my ever darling pastimes now as ever, with the knitting always on the same table with the pen, to show visitors they are welcome.

All will respect and esteem you for persevering in what you know to be your duty.

Friendship is built by attention to the other.

Truth does not depend on the people around us or the place we are in.

I find in proportion as my heart is more drawn towards the summit, it looks back with added tenderness to everyone I have ever loved.

Instead of measuring your difficulties with your strength you must measure them with the powerful help you have a right to expect from God.

God shows his power by means of weak instruments, and his wisdom by ignorance.

Go to meet everyone in the grace of the moment which we never know till we find the humor and temper of the one we are to meet with.

Our love of God is always opposed by our self-love, our love of one another by the miserable pride and pretension which creates jealous, rash judgment and the pitiful dislikes and impatience which so often trouble us and wound charity.

Eternity / Peace

How small the world seems when one looks at it from a distance.

I am quite satisfied to sow in tears if I may reap with joy.

I must jog along the allotted path through all its windings and weariness until it brings me home where all tears will be wiped away and sorrow and sighing be heard no more.

If only we have courage, we will go to heaven on horseback instead of idling and creeping along.

Every good action is a grain of seed for eternal life.

Looking up steadily spares the pain, both of retrospection and anticipation.

Spirituality

Take every event gently and quietly, and oppose good nature and cheerfulness to every contradiction.

We must pray literally, without ceasing—in every occurrence and employment of our lives that prayer of the heart which is independent of place or situation.

Oh, my God, forgive what I have been, correct where I am and direct what I shall be.

To correspond to the grace of the moment means a wonderful union between you and God all day.

This union of my soul with God is my wealth in poverty and joy in deepest affliction.

Give some time everyday, if it is only an hour, to devotional reading, as necessary to the well-ordering of the mind as the hand of the gardener is to prevent the weeds.

Take every day as a ring which you must engrave, adorn and embellish with your actions to be offered up in the evening at the altar of God.

This is true contentment—to hope for nothing, desire nothing, expect nothing.

Without prayer, I should be of little service.

If I seek God in the simplicity of my heart, I will find him.

I am so in love now with the Rules (Religious Community Directives) that I see the bit of the bridle all gold and the reins all of silk.

I look neither behind nor before but straight upwards.

Suffering

Perseverance is a great grace. To go on gaining and advancing every day, we must be resolute and bear and suffer as our blessed forerunners did. Which of them gained heaven without a struggle?

The peace which is the portion of the chosen servants of God is seldom unmixed with interior struggles.

God is with us and if sufferings abound in us, his consolations also greatly abound and far exceed an utterance.

Faith lifts the staggering soul on one side; Hope supports it on the other. Experience says it must be, and Love says—let it be.