There is no affliction, trial, or labor difficult to endure, when we consider the torments and sufferings which Our Lord Jesus Christ endured for us.
Teresa Of AvilaRead
If you seek to carry no other crosses but those whose reason you understand, perfection is not for you.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that true perfection cannot be achieved if one only accepts challenges they fully comprehend.
Teresa of Avila's quote emphasizes the value of embracing challenges and burdens in life, even those that may be difficult or irrational. It conveys that striving for perfection often requires enduring hardships and accepting responsibilities that might not make immediate sense, thereby highlighting the importance of growth through adversity.
In practice
This can be quoted during a motivational speech to inspire resilience in the face of challenges.
There is no affliction, trial, or labor difficult to endure, when we consider the torments and sufferings which Our Lord Jesus Christ endured for us.
How often I failed in my duty to God, because I was not leaning on the strong pillar of prayer.
What friends or kindred can be so close and intimate as the powers of our soul, which, whether we will or no, must ever bear us company?
To converse with You, O King of glory, no third person is needed, You are always ready in the Sacrament of the Altar to give audience to all. All who desire You always find You there, and converse with You face to face
If we do not use great care to mortify our will, there are many things which can deprives us of the holy freedom of spirit that we are seeking in order to fly more freely to our Creator, without always being bogged down with the clay of this earth. Moreover, there can never be solid virtue in a soul that is attached to its own will.
I say the same of humility and of all the virtues; the wiles of the devil are terrible, he will run a thousand times round hell if by so doing he can make us believe that we have a single virtue which we have not. And he is right, for such ideas are very harmful, and such imaginary virtues, when they come from this source, are never unaccompanied by vainglory; just as those which God gives are free both from this and from pride.
Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie - I found that out.
It helps to write down half a dozen things which are worrying me. Two of them, say, disappear; about two of them nothing can be done, so it's no use worrying; and two perhaps can be settled.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
If there is one lesson that I have learned during my life as an analyst, it is the lesson that what my patients tell me is likely to be true - that many times when I believed that I was right and my patients were wrong, it turned out, though often only after a prolonged search, that my rightness was superficial whereas their rightness was profound.
What I've noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it's so wonderfully fair.
No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character.
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