Evelyn Underhill

Christian history looks glorious in retrospect but it is made up of constant hard choices and unattractive tasks, accepted under the pressure of the Will of God

You don't have to be peculiar to find God.

Try to arrange things so that you can have a reasonable bit of quiet every day.

Towards my husband, I often fail to show interest in his affairs and amusements, not rousing myself to respond when I'm tired or concerned with other things, forgetting he is very patient with me.

There is no place in my soul, no corner of my character, where God is not.

The will is what matters - as long as you have that, you are safe.

The direction and constancy of the will is what really matters, and intellect and feeling are only important insofar as they contribute to that.

Never forget that the key to the situation lies in the will and not in the imagination.

In my relations with my father, which are difficult and where I'm often met by coolness and indifference, I am constantly tempted to be cold and indifferent. Yet I know that this is a test if I could take it rightly.

God is always coming to you in the Sacrament of the Present Moment. Meet and receive Him there with gratitude in that sacrament.

Every minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds. Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again.

Adoration is caring for God above all else.

God is acting on your soul all the time, whether you have spiritual sensations or not.

God is much in the difficult home problems as in the times of quiet and prayer.

Delicate humor is the crowning virtue of the saints.

Do not be scrupulous and think it selfish. You are obeying God's call and giving Him the opportunity to teach you what He wants you to know.

Deliberately seek opportunities for kindness, sympathy, and patience.

After all it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.

All things are perceived in the light of charity, and hence under the aspect of beauty for beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love.

If by losing the spirit of prayer, you mean losing the heavenly sensations of deep devotion, I am afraid that does not matter a scrap.

We have descended into the garden and caught three hundred slugs. How I love the mixture of the beautiful and the squalid in gardening. It makes it so lifelike.

Most of our conflicts and difficulties come from trying to deal with the spiritual and practical aspects of our life separately instead of realizing them as parts of one whole. If our practical life is centered on our own interests, cluttered up by possessions, distracted by ambitions, passions, wants and worries, beset by a sense of our own rights and importance, or anxieties for our own future, or longings for our own success, we need not expect that our spiritual life will be a contrast to all this. The soul's house is not built on such a convenient plan there are few soundproof partitions in it. Only when the conviction not merely the idea that the demand of the Spirit, however inconvenient, rules the whole of it, will those objectionable noises die down which have a way of penetrating into the nicely furnished little oratory and drowning all the quieter voices by their din.

A simple rule, to be followed whether one is in the light or not, gives backbone to one's spiritual life, as nothing else can.