Christian Perfection - Fenelon

Resignation
He leads relentlessly from vexation to vexation, from importunity to importunity, and makes you
accomplish his great plans by these conditions of boredom, by childish and idle conversations, of which we are ashamed. He presses the faithful soul, and no longer lets it get its breath. Hardly one annoying person goes away before God sends another to advance his work. We should like to be free to think about God, but we unite ourselves much better with him through his crucifying will, than by consoling ourselves with sweet and loving thoughts of his goodness. We should like to be by ourselves to be more with God. We do not realize that there is no worse way of being with God, than to want to be also by ourselves.
We think we regret God, and it is self which we regret, because what we find the hardest in this irritating and upsetting state is that we can never be free with our own self. It is the desire of the "I," which remain to us, and which would ask for a more serene state, to enjoy in own way our own  spirit, our own sentiments and all our good qualities, in the society of some hypersensitive people who would be apt to make us feel whatever would be most flattering. Or else we would like to enjoy the silence of God and the sweetness pf piety, instead of God wanting to enjoy us, and to break us in order to bend us to his will.

Crosses
Suffering then is only a matter of suffering and being silent before God. "I am still," said David,  because thou hast acted. It is God who sends the humours; the fevers, the mental torments, the  weaknesses, the exhaustions, the importunities, the annoyances. It is he who sends even the grandeur with all its torments and its cursed gear. It is he who brings to birth within us the dryness, the impatience, the discouragement, to humiliate us by temptation and to show us ourselves such as we are. It is he who does all. We have only to see him and to adore him in all.

We must not be at all in a hurry to obtain an artificial presence of God and of his truths. It is enough to live simply in this disposition of heart, to wish to be crucified; most of all a simple effortless life, which we renew every time that we are turned from it within by some memory, which is a kind of awakening of the heart.

Mortification and Recollection

We should not be able to make a general rule for what depends on the particular circumstance of each person. We must measure ourselves by our weakness, by our need to guard ourselves, by our inner
compunction, by the signs of Providence in exterior things, by the time we have to spend, and by the state of our health. So it is right to begin with the needs of mind and body, and to reserve enough hours for both, on the advice of a pious and experienced person. For the rest of the time, we must still examine thoroughly the duties of the place in which we are, the real good which can be done there, and that which God gives for our success there, without giving ourselves up to a blind zeal.

Let us come to examples. It is not right to stay with a person to whom we could be of no use, when we could be meeting others productively, at least if we have not any debt, such as relationship, very old friendship or courtesy, which obligates us to stay with the first person. Otherwise we should get rid of him, after having done what is proper to treat him honourably.
Be free, gay, simple, a child. But be a sturdy child, who fears nothing, who speaks out frankly, who lets himself be led, who is carried in the arms, in a word, one who knows nothing, can do nothing, can anticipate and change nothing, but who has a freedom and a strength forbidden to the great. This childhood baffles the wise, and God himself speaks by the mouth of such children.