What should you, O man, do, you who seek your own glory whenever you do anything good, while when you do something bad, you figure out ways to blame God.

When consent takes the form of seeking to possess the things we wish, this is called desire. When consent takes the form of enjoying the things we wish, this is called joy.

This is pride when the soul abandons Him to Whom it ought to cleave as its end and becomes a kind of end to itself. This happens when it becomes its own satisfaction.

True inner righteousness does not judge according to custom but by the measure of the most perfect law of God Almighty by which the mores of various places and times were adapted to those places and times.

All these last offices and ceremonies that concern the dead, the careful funeral arrangements, and the equipment of the tomb, and the pomp of obsequies, are rather the solace of the living than the comfort of the dead.

But if you do not wish to die of thirst in the desert, drink charity. This is the fountain the Lord has willed to place here, lest we faint on the way, and we shall drink it more abundantly when we come to the Fatherland.