Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

Tranquillity according to His essence, activity according to His nature: perfect stillness, perfect fecundity.

John of Ruysbroeck: De Vera Contemplatione.

17th Thursday after Trinity

There is no other righteousness save that of the man who sets himself under judgement, of the man who is terrified and hopes. He shall live. He has the expectation of true life, for, recognizing that this life is naught, he is never without the reflection of the true life in this life, never without the prospect of incorruption in that which is passing to corruption. The great impossibility has announced to him the end and goal of every trivial impossibility. He shall live of the faithfulness of God.

Barth: The Epistle to the Romans.

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.

St Teresa: The Interior Castle.

17th Wednesday after Trinity

If thou hast broken a vow, tie a knot on it to make it hold together again. It is a spiritual thrift, and no misbecoming baseness, to piece and join thy neglected promises with fresh ones. So shall thy vow in effect be not broken when new mended: and remain the same, though not by one entire continuation, yet by a constant successive renovation.

Thomas Fuller: A Wounded Conscience.

To be free is precisely the same thing as to be pious, wise, just and temperate, careful of one's own, abstinent from what is another's, and thence, in fine, magnanimous and brave.

John Milton: Second Defense.

17th Tuesday after Trinity

The man who wishes to prove himself always in the right, in everything that he does, sees, hears, and discusses, and who will not give way and be silenced, will never be at peace in himself, and will have a barren, sullen, and wandering mind; he will prey upon himself, even though he be left in peace by all, and is tried by no outward pressure.

Johannes Tauler: Sermons.

Oh, the dignity, the DIGNITY of mediocre souls!  I have known it for a long time, this sinister mockery of my Saviour crucified!

Léon Bloy: Letters to his Fiancée.

17th Monday after Trinity

Now forasmuch as God hath so furnished the world, that there is no good thing needful but the same is also possible to be had; justice is the virtue whereby that good which wanteth in ourselves we receive inoffensively at the hands of others.

Richard Hooker: Sermons.

We must be always on our guard lest under pretext of keeping one commandment we be found breaking another.

St. Basil: The Longer Rules.

Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

A brother asked Abba Poemen, saying, "Tell me, why is it that when I offer repentance to a brother who is wroth with me I do not see him pleased with me?"  The old man said unto him, "Tell me truly: when thou offerest to him repentance, dost thou not think that thou art not doing it because thou hast sinned against him, but because of the commandment?"  And the brother said unto him, "It is even thus."  The old man said unto him, "Because of this God doth not permit him to be pleased with thee, and because thou dost not offer repentance to him in fulfilment of thine own desire, but as if thou hadst not sinned against him, but he had sinned against thee."

The Paradise of the Fathers.