Saint John Nepomucene Neumann

The few [priests] we have are sadly out of proportion to the ever-increasing wants of the faithful. There are Catholics who have not been to confession for many years, and there are young people of nineteen or twenty who have nothing of Catholicity about them, saving their baptism and all this from the want of priests. The longer this need continues, the more difficult it will be to reanimate faith and the fear of God.

-- Saint John Nepomucene Neumann

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

We know certainly that our God calls us to a holy life. We know that he gives us every grace, every abundant grace; and though we are so weak of ourselves, this grace is able to carry us through every obstacle and difficulty.

-- Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton 

Saint Gregory Nazianzen

Let us not esteem worldly prosperity or adversity as things real or of any moment, but let us live elsewhere, and raise all our attention to Heaven; esteeming sin as the only true evil, and nothing truly good, but virtue which unites us to God.  

-- Saint Gregory Nazianzen

Saint Basil the Great

Of the dogmas and messages preserved in the Church, some we possess from written teaching and others we receive from the tradition of the apostles, handed on to us in mystery. In respect to piety, both are of the same force. No one will contradict any of these, no one, at any rate, who is even moderately versed in matters ecclesiastical. Indeed, were we to try to reject unwritten customs as having no great authority, we would unwittingly injure the gospel in its vitals; or rather, we would reduce the Christian message to a mere term.

-- Saint Basil the Great

Saint Ignatius of Antioch

Mary's viginity and giving birth, and even the Lord's death escaped the notice of the prince of this world; these three mysteries worthy of proclamation were accomplished in God's silence.

-- Saint Ignatius of Antioch

Saint Epiphanius of Salamis

It is needful also to make use of tradition, for not everything can be gotten from sacred Scripture. The holy apostles handed down some things in the scriptures, other things in tradition.

-- Saint Epiphanius of Salamis

Saint Irenaeus of Lyons

Being obedient she became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race. The knot of Eve's disobedience was untied by Mary's obedience: what Eve bound through her disbelief, the Virgin Mary loosened by her faith. 

-- Saint Irenaeus of Lyons