Through the entire Way of Perfection there runs the author’s desire to teach others to love prayer, the most effective means of attaining virtue. Her counsels are the fruit, not of lofty mental speculations, but of mature practical experience.

Of all St Teresa’s writings it is the most easily comprehensible and it can be read with profit by a greater number of people than any of her other works. Skilfully, and in a way profitable to all, she intermingles her teaching on the most rudimentary principles of the religious life with instruction on the most sublime and elusive tenets of mystical theology.