Prayer--ardent desire and loving attention

The Manna of the Soul Meditations for Each Day of the Year By Paolo Segneri: "
"...And, desiring to teach her daughters the noblest possible prayer..."

tragedy of withholding from God so many hours which will never come back

The Liturgical Year By Prosper Guéranger, Catholic Church: "it was a fault in thee who wast called to something higher to withhold from God so many hours which he was inwardly urging thee to reserve for him alone. And who knows whither thy soul might have been led hadst thou continued longer thus to wound thy Spouse. But we whose tepidity can see nothing in thy great sins but what would be perfection in many of us have a right to appreciate as the Church does both thy life and thy writings and to pray with her on this joyful day of thy feast that we may be nourished with thy heavenly doctrine and kindled with thy love of God"

Do more good works in a day than many others in many years

Devotion to the sacred heart of Jesus. Transl By Jean Croiset: ""

By this practice, More in a Month than by any other practice in Many Years

A treatise on the true devotion to the blessed virgin, tr. by F.W. Faber By Louis Marie Grignon de Montfort, Mary: ""

trying to avoid the slightest distraction in prayer, but blind

A father thinks that it is quite enough to maintain good order in his house; he will not have anyone swearing or using obscene words. That is very good. But he has no scruple about allowing his boys to go to amusements, to fairs, and all sorts of pleasures like that. This same father permits work to be done on Sundays on the slightest pretext, even such as not to go against the wishes of his reapers or his threshers. However, you see him in church adoring God, even prostrate before Him: he is trying to avoid the slightest distraction. But tell me, my friends, how do you suppose God can look upon such people as that? Carry on, my poor friend, you are blind. Go and learn your duties and then you may come to offer your prayers to God. Do you not see that you are doing the work of Pontius Pilate, who recognised Jesus Christ and who yet condemned Him?

...

We see others, too, who are all full of pious practices, who become full of scruples at omitting some prayers they usually say. They would think themselves lost if they were not at Holy
Communion on certain days when they have the habit of receiving, but trifles make them impatient and grumblers. A mere word which they did not care for will fill them with coldness and dislike. They will have difficulty in being civil to their neighbour; they will want to have nothing to do with him; on different pretexts, they will avoid his company; they will find that someone has been behaving badly in respect of them.

Go away, you poor hypocrites, go and become converted; after that you may have recourse to the Sacraments, which, in your state, without knowing it, you are only profaning with your wrongly understood devotion.

From the Sermons of St. Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney

[The lessons to be learned from this is that we should not excel in only in parts of our spirituality; we must strive to know our duties well by much spiritual reading, so that we may never commit evil nor omit good in any aspect of our lives.]

Presumption of expecting help in temptation when one has voluntarily put oneself in it

The Manna of the Soul Meditations for Each Day of the Year By Paolo Segneri:

"the second temptation
was to presumption, as though God's help must always be at
hand even in a peril which was voluntarily incurred"

We can't go into a certain state of life we know to be dangerous for our salvation and expect the God's help in the difficulties of that state, which could have been avoided.