Quotes by Ignatius of Loyola

“Try to keep your soul always in peace and quiet, always ready for whatever our lord may wish to work in you. it is certainly a higher virtue of the soul, and a greater grace, to be able to enjoy th...”

“Lord, teach me to be generous;Teach me to serve you as you deserve;To give and not to count the cost;To fight and not to heed the wounds;To toil, and not to seek for rest;To labor, and not to ask f...”

“Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all I have and call my own. You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do wit...”

“In our spreading materialist wasteland, more and more people thirst for contemplation, including political wheel-dealers, tycoons, and military top brass, stressed out by the rigors of their profes...”

“If our church is not marked by caring for the poor, the oppressed, the hungry, we are guilty of heresy.”

“If God causes you to suffer much, it is a sign that He has great designs for you, and that He certainly intends to make you a saint. And if you wish to become a great saint, entreat Him yourself to...”

“Calisto, a companion of Ignatius, and who on recovering from a severe illness had heard of the imprisonment of Ignatius, hastened from Segnovia, where he was staying, and came to Alcala, that he, t...”

“What seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical Church so defines.”

“Let us work as if success depended upon ourselves alone but with heartfelt conviction that we are doing nothing and God everything.”

“Let us work as if success depended upon ourselves alone but with heartfelt conviction that we are doing nothing and God everything.”

“I have studied at Barcelona, at Salamanca, at Alcala, at Paris; what have I learned? The language of doubt; but in me there was no harbor for doubt. Jesus came, and my trust in God has grown by the...”

“Up to his twenty-sixth year the heart of Ignatius was enthralled by the vanities of the world. His special delight was in the military life, and he seemed led by a strong and empty desire of gainin...”

“Let me look at the foulness and ugliness of my body. Let me see myself as an ulcerous sore running with every horrible and disgusting poison.”

“The safest and most suitable form of penance seems to be that which causes pain in the flesh but does not penetrate to the bones, that is, which causes suffering but not sickness. So the best way s...”

“The picture. A great plain, comprising the entire Jerusalem district, where is the supreme Commander-in-Chief of the forces of good, Christ our Lord: another plain near Babylon, where Lucifer is, a...”

“Imagine that leader of all the enemy, in that great plain of Babylon, sitting on a sort of throne of smoking flame, a horrible and terrifying sight. Watch him calling together countless devils, to ...”

“The enemy is like a woman, weak in face of opposition, but correspondingly strong when not opposed. In a quarrel with a man, it is natural for a woman to lose heart and run away when he faces up to...”

“We should always be prepared so as never to err to believe that what I see as white is black, if the hierarchical Church defines it thus.”

“Ignatius, for understandable reasons, is the saint I know better than any other. He founded our Order. … Jesuits were and still are the leavening — not the only one but perhaps the most effective —...”

“[Friends of order] are often heard to say that the Jesuits must be reestablished. Without disputing the merits of this order, one must say that this suggestion for their reestablishment indicates a...”