The Practice of Perfection and Christian VirtuesPart Two On modesty and silence How Necessary Modesty Is for the Edification and Profit of Our Neighbor How Necessary Modesty Is for Our Own Advancement Of the Mistake of Those Who Make Small Account of These Exterior Things, Saying that Perfection Does Not Consist in Them Of Silence, and the Great Blessings and Advantages There Are in It That Silence Is a Very Important Means to Be a Man of Prayer That Silence Is a Direct Means of Spiritual Advancement and the Attainment of Perfection That to Live in Modest Silence and Recollection Is Not a Sad but a Very Cheerful Life Of the Circumstances Necessary for Speaking Well Of the Vice of Backbiting or Detraction That We Should Not Lend Our Ears to Detractions That We Must Beware of All Manner of Lies That We Should Beware of Jocose and Ridiculous Expressions, and Saying Smart and Witty Things That Our Talk and Conversations Ought to Be of God, and of Some Means to Make Them So Of Another Chief Reason Making It Highly Befitting that Our Talks and Conversations with Our Neighbors Should Be about God
