Quotes by Saint Avila

• To reach something good it is very useful to have gone astray, and thus acquire experience.
• Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds.
• Pain is never permanent.
• The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too.
• The tree that is beside the running water is fresher and gives more fruit.
• There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.
• We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can - namely, surrender our will and fulfill God's will in us.
• It is here, my daughters, that love is to be found - not hidden away in corners but in the midst of occasions of sin. And believe me, although we may more often fail and commit small lapses, our gain will be incomparably the greater.
• All things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted.
• Be gentle to all and stern with yourself.
• God gave us faculties for our use; each of them will receive its proper reward. Then do not let us try to charm them to sleep, but permit them to do their work until divinely called to something higher.
• I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.
• O my God, what must a soul be like when it is in this state! It longs to be all one tongue with which to praise the Lord. It utters a thousand pious follies, in a continuous endeavor to please Him who thus possesses it.
• God has been very good to me, for I never dwell upon anything wrong which a person has done, so as to remember it afterwards. If I do remember it, I always see some other virtue in that person.