Whenever I consider how short life is, I am grievously impressed by your incessant preoccupation with your material welfare, whereas you attach so little importance and devote so little time to your moral improvement, which shall be counted to you for eternity. In seeing your industriousness, one might believe that it is connected with an issue of great interest for humankind, whereas in most cases it is nothing more than an attempt to satisfy exaggerated needs and vanity, or to give yourselves over to excesses. How much grief, worry and torment you inflict upon yourselves; how many sleepless nights to increase wealth that is often more than sufficient already! At the height of such blindness, one often sees those to whom an immoderate love for wealth and the pleasures it provides subjected to pain-filled labor, priding themselves of a life full of sacrifice and merit – as if they were actually working for others and not for themselves! Fools! Do you then really believe that the worries and efforts motivated by selfishness, greed or pride will be taken into account while you neglect the care for your future, as well as the duties that fraternal solidarity imposes on all those who enjoy the advantages of societal life? You have been thinking only of your own bodies, whose well-being and pleasures have been the sole object of your selfish solicitude. For your body, which dies, you have neglected your spirit, which will live forever. That master so cherished and cared for has become your tyrant. It commands your spirit, which has become its slave. Is that the purpose of the existence that God has given you?

A Protector Spirit (Krakow, 1861)