Mother Teresa Quotes

We have collected and put the best Mother Teresa Quotes in the following categories. Enjoy reading these insights and feel free to share this page on your social media to inspire others.

May these Mother Teresa quotes on abortion, life, death, love, charity, and more inspire you to never give up and keep working towards your goals. Who knows—success could be just around the corner.

See also: Mother Teresa’s Quotes and Mother Teresa’s Prayers

Saint Mother Teresa, also known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta (26 August 1910  – 5 September 1997), born Anjezë Gonxha Bojaxhiu, was an Albanian-born Indian citizen, Roman Catholic Sister, and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Mother Teresa Quotes

Mother Teresa Quotes

A beautiful death is for people who have lived like animals to die like angels. – Mother Teresa

A beautiful death is for people who lived like animals to die like angels—loved and wanted. – Mother Teresa

A Christian is the dwelling place of the living God. He created me, he chose me, He came to dwell in me, because he wanted me. Now that you have known how much God is in love with you it is but natural that you spend the rest of your life radiating that love. – Mother Teresa

A clean heart can see God, can speak to God, and can see the love of God in others. – Mother Teresa

A clean heart is a free heart. A free heart can love Christ with an undivided love in chastity, convinced that nothing and nobody will separate it from his love. Purity, chastity, and virginity created a special beauty in Mary that attracted God’s attention. – Mother Teresa

A clean heart is a free heart. A free heart can love Christ with an undivided love in chastity, convinced that nothing and nobody will separate it from his love. Purity, chastity, and virginity created a special beauty in Mary that attracted God’s attention. He showed his great love for the world by giving Jesus to her. – Mother Teresa

A day lived without doing something good for others is a day not worth living. – Mother Teresa

A family that prays together stays together. As we are united at this moment, let us join also the prayer of all and everyone. What you can do I cannot do. And what I can do you cannot do. But all of us together are doing something beautiful for God. – Mother Teresa

A Mother is the heart of the home. – Mother Teresa

A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt and must empty ourselves. Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His LOVE than in your weakness. – Mother Teresa

A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, and must empty ourselves. Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in his love than in your weakness. – Mother Teresa

A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves. – Mother Teresa

A smile is the beginning of peace. – Mother Teresa

All of us must be saints in this world. Holiness is a duty for you and me. So let’s be saints and so give glory to the Father. – Mother Teresa

All of us our but his instruments who do our part and pass by. – Mother Teresa

All that we need to know all the wisdom of the cosmos we will find in our own heart. – Mother Teresa

All we do our prayers our work our suffering is for Jesus. Our life has no other reason or motivation. – Mother Teresa

All works of love are works of peace. – Mother Teresa

Am I ever angry or frustrated? I only feel angry sometimes when I see waste, when things that we waste are what people need, things that would save them from dying. Frustrated? No, never. – Mother Teresa

And so let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love… – Mother Teresa

And whatever you did to the least of my brethren, you did it to me. – Mother Teresa

Any work of love brings a person face to face with God. – Mother Teresa

Anybody who helps the poor is delighted. – Mother Teresa

Anybody who helps the poor is delighted. So naturally, they (critics) are not very happy with us. – Mother Teresa

Anyone is capable of going to Heaven. Heaven is our home. People ask me about death and whether I look forward to it and I answer, ‘Of course’, because I am going home. Dying is not the end, it is just the beginning. Death is a continuation of life. This is the meaning of eternal life; it is where our soul goes to God, to be in the presence of God, to see God, to speak to God, to continue loving Him with greater love because in Heaven we shall be able to love Him with our whole heart and our soul because we only surrender our body in death – our heart and our soul live forever. When we die we are going to be with God, and all those we have known who have gone before us: our family and our friends will be there waiting for us. Heaven must be a beautiful place. – Mother Teresa

As each Sister is to become a Co-Worker of Christ in the slums, each ought to understand what God and the Missionaries of Charity expect from her. Let Christ radiate and live his life in her and through her in the slums. Let the poor, seeing her, be drawn to Christ and invite him to enter their homes and their lives. Let the sick and suffering find in her a real angel of comfort and consolation. Let the little ones of the streets cling to her because she reminds them of him, the friend of the little ones. – Mother Teresa

As far as I am concerned, the greatest suffering is to feel alone, unwanted, unloved. The greatest suffering is also having no one, forgetting what an intimate, truly human relationship is, not knowing what it means to be loved, not having a family or friends. – Mother Teresa

As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves but does not speak … I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have free hand. – Mother Teresa

As Lent is the time for greater love, listen to Jesus’ thirst…’Repent and believe’ Jesus tells us. What are we to repent? Our indifference, our hardness of heart. What are we to believe? Jesus thirsts even now, in your heart and in the poor — He knows your weakness. He wants only your love, wants only the chance to love you. – Mother Teresa

As soon as we take the enfleshment of God, the incarnation which, for Christians, is represented by the person of Jesus Christ, then we start taking things seriously. – Mother Teresa

Ask and seek and you heart will grow big enough to receive Him and to keep Him as your own. Wherever God has put you, that is your vocation. – Mother Teresa

At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done. – Mother Teresa

At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done. We will be judged by I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless, and you took me in. – Mother Teresa

At the hour of death when we all come face to face with God we are going to be judged on love: how much we have loved, not how much we have done but how much love we have put in our action. – Mother Teresa

At the hour of death when we come face-to-face with God, we are going to be judged on love; not how much we have done, but how much love we put into the doing. – Mother Teresa

Be faithful in little things, for in them your strength lies. To the good God nothing is little, because He is so great and we are so small. – Mother Teresa

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. – Mother Teresa

Be happy anyway. – Mother Teresa

Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more. – Mother Teresa

Be not afraid. God loves you & wants us to love one another as He loves us. As miserable, weak and sinful as we are, He loves us with an infinitely faithful love. – Mother Teresa

Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. – Mother Teresa

Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting. – Mother Teresa

Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile. – Mother Teresa

Because I cannot rely on myself, I rely on Him, twenty-four hours a day. – Mother Teresa

Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen, for God speaks in the silence of the heart. – Mother Teresa

Behold , I have graven you upon the palm of my hand, that is what Jesus came on earth to do: to proclaim, to give us the Good News that God loves us, that we are precious to Him. – Mother Teresa

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. – Mother Teresa

Bring love into your home, for this is where our love for each other must start. – Mother Teresa

Brothers, Fathers and Sisters – all of us in the Missionaries of Charity are doing the same. All of us have been created by God to love and to be loved. We are involved in this work. When you do that, there is joy, unity and love. – Mother Teresa

But if Your Tongue is Positive, The World will Love you. – Mother Teresa

But still, everything is for Jesus; so like that everything is beautiful, even though it is difficult. – Mother Teresa

By our life and deeds of love, we are making the Church fully present in the world today. – Mother Teresa

Calcuttas are everywhere if only we have eyes to see. Find your Calcutta. – Mother Teresa

Cheerfulness is a sign of a generous and mortified person who forgetting all things, even herself, tries to please her God in all she does for souls. Cheerfulness is often a cloak which hides a life of sacrifice and a continual union with God. – Mother Teresa

Christ came to be Father’s compassion to the world. Be kind in your actions. Do not think that you are the only one who can do efficient work, work worth showing. This makes you harsh in your judgment of others who may not have the same talents. Do your best and trust that others do their best. And be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. – Mother Teresa

Christ is hidden under the suffering appearance of anyone who is hungry, anyone who is naked, anyone who is homeless or dying. – Mother Teresa

Christ prays in me, Christ works in me, Christ thinks in me, Christ looks through my eyes, Christ speaks through my words, Christ works with my hands, Christ walks with my feet, Christ loves with my heart. As St Paul’s prayer was: I belong to Christ and nothing will separate me from the love of Christ. It was that oneness, oneness with God in the Holy Spirit. – Mother Teresa

Communion with Christ gives us our strength, our joy, and our love. – Mother Teresa

Dealing with the media is more difficult that bathing a leper – Mother Teresa

Death is nothing else but going home to God, the bond of love will be unbroken for all eternity. – Mother Teresa

Death, in the final analysis, is only the easiest and quickest means to go back to God. If only we could make people understand that we come from God and that we have to go back to Him! – Mother Teresa

Deliver me, O Jesus, From the desire of being loved, From the desire of being extolled, From the desire of being honored, From the desire of being praised, From the desire of being preferred, From the desire of being consulted, From the desire of being approved, From the desire of being popular, From the fear of being humiliated, From the fear of being despised, From the fear of suffering rebukes, From the fear of being calumniated, From the fear of being forgotten, From the fear of being wronged, From the fear of being ridiculed, From the fear of being suspected. – Mother Teresa

‎Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment. – Mother Teresa

Do great in the small things. – Mother Teresa

Do not allow yourselves to be disheartened by any failure as long as you have done your best. – Mother Teresa

Do not let the past disturb you, just leave everything in the Sacred Heart and begin again with joy. – Mother Teresa

Do not look for Jesus away from yourselves. He is not out there; He is in you. Keep your lamp burning, and you will recognize him. – Mother Teresa

Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. – Mother Teresa

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. – Mother Teresa

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. – Mother Teresa

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. – Mother Teresa

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person. – Mother Teresa

Do not worry about why problems exist in the world – just respond to people’s needs. – Mother Teresa

Do not worry about your career. Concern yourself with your vocation, and that is to be lovers of Jesus. – Mother Teresa

Do ordinary things with extraordinary love. – Mother Teresa

Do small things with great love. – Mother Teresa

Do we know our poor people? Do we know the poor in our house, in our family? Perhaps they are not hungry for a piece of bread. Perhaps our children, husband, wife, are not hungry, or naked, or dispossessed, but are you sure there is no one there who feels unwanted, deprived of affection? – Mother Teresa

Do you really know the living Jesus – not from books but from being with Him in your heart? Have you heard the loving words He speaks to you?… The devil may try to use the hurts of life, and sometimes our own mistakes – to make you feel it is impossible that Jesus really loves you, is really cleaving to you. This is a danger for all of us. And so sad, because it is completely the opposite of what Jesus is really wanting, waiting to tell you. Not only that He loves you, but even more – He longs for you. – Mother Teresa

Do you want to be great? Pick up a broom and sweep the floor. – Mother Teresa

Do you want to do something beautiful for God? There is a person who needs you. This is your chance. – Mother Teresa

Doctors can heal the body, but it is music that uplifts the spirit. – Mother Teresa

Don’t wait for leaders. Do it alone, person to person. – Mother Teresa

Don’t aim for success if you want it, just do what you love and believe in, Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier and it will come naturally. – Mother Teresa

Don’t expect your friend to be a perfect person. Help your friend to become a perfect person. That is true friendship. – Mother Teresa

Don’t look for big things, just do small things with great love…the smaller the thing, the greater must be our love. – Mother Teresa

Don’t wait to be led…do it yourself, person to person. – Mother Teresa

Duty is a very personal thing. It is what comes from knowing the need to take action and not just a need to urge others to do something. – Mother Teresa

Each of us is merely a small instrument; all of us, after accomplishing our mission, will disappear. – Mother Teresa

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise. – Mother Teresa

Each time anyone comes in contact with us, they must become different and better people because of having met us. We must radiate God’s love. – Mother Teresa

Even God could do nothing for someone already full. You have to be completely empty to let Him in to do what He will. – Mother Teresa

Even if I want I cannot make you say sorry to God. – Mother Teresa

Even if I wanted, I cannot do anything. When they die, we always send for their co-religionists. Muslims take the Muslim’s body to bury it, Hindus come and take away the dead to be cremated and Christians come and bury their dead. – Mother Teresa

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there. – Mother Teresa

Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own. – Mother Teresa

Even when the urgent is good, the good can keep you from your best, keep you from your unique contribution, if you let it. – Mother Teresa

Every adult was once a child free from prejudice. – Mother Teresa

Every country I love and I am a child of God to love the humans. – Mother Teresa

Every day I see Jesus Christ in all his distressing disguises. – Mother Teresa

Every human being in that case resembles Christ in his loneliness; and that is the hardest part, that’s real hunger. – Mother Teresa

Every time I ask for visa, they (USA) give me visa for five years. I have never had any problem in getting a visa to any nation. – Mother Teresa

Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. – Mother Teresa

Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. – Mother Teresa

Everybody has something good inside them. Some hide it, some neglect it, but it is there. – Mother Teresa

Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world. – Mother Teresa

Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. – Mother Teresa

Everything starts from prayer. Without asking God for love, we cannot possess love and still less are we able to give it to others. Just as people today are speaking so much about the poor but they do not know or talk to the poor, we too cannot talk so much about prayer and yet not know how to pray. – Mother Teresa

Everything that is not given is lost. – Mother Teresa

Failure is merely feedback that there is something blocking the path of the emergence and expansion of the greatest version of yourself.

Failure is nothing but the kiss of Jesus. – Mother Teresa

Fill up the loneliness and suffering of someone lacking love in our own family. – Mother Teresa

Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering and the lonely right there where you are. – Mother Teresa

Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering and the lonely right there where you are in your own homes and in your own families, in your workplaces and in your schools. You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see. Everywhere, wherever you go, you find people who are unwanted, unloved, uncared for, just rejected by society completely forgotten, completely left alone. – Mother Teresa

Follow the path of serenity. Why lose your temper if by losing it you offend God,
trouble your neighbor and in the end have to set things aright anyway? – Mother Teresa

Following Jesus is simple, but not easy. Love until it hurts, and then love more. – Mother Teresa

For all those who make such stories which are not true, I only say God forgive all these people. I feel sorry for them because they are doing so much harm to themselves. – Mother Teresa

For love to be real, it must cost, it must hurt, it must empty us of self. – Mother Teresa

For me, life is the most beautiful gift of God to mankind, therefore people and nations who destroy life by abortion and euthanasia are the poorest. I do not say legal or illegal, but I think that no human hand should be raised to kill life, since life is God’s life in us, even in an unborn child. – Mother Teresa

Forgive them anyway. – Mother Teresa

Fr. Bert White: I think when you focus on money and property ownership, you go the way of the material world, of the Big, of Up and More. It becomes your agenda and then faith can fly out of the window. There has to be faith and a trust in God’s reality – a trust that things will work out. – Mother Teresa

From the moment a soul has the grace to know God, she must seek. – Mother Teresa

Gandhi felt fascinated at knowing Christ. He met Christians, and felt let down. – Mother Teresa

Give that child to me. I want it. I will care for it. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child. – Mother Teresa

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. – Mother Teresa

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway. – Mother Teresa

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. – Mother Teresa

Give your best anyway. – Mother Teresa

Go out into the world today and love the people you meet. Let your presence light new light in the hearts of people. – Mother Teresa

God doesn’t require us to succeed; he only requires that you try. – Mother Teresa

Good works are links that form a chain of love. – Mother Teresa

Gratitude to God is to accept everything, even my problems, with joy. – Mother Teresa

Have a great compassion for people. To be able to have a heart full of compassion, we need to pray. Especially be kind, be loving to the poor. We think we do so much for the poor, but it is they who make us rich. We are in debt to them. Do you want to do something beautiful for God? There is a person who needs you. This is your chance. – Mother Teresa

He came amongst his own and his own received him not, and it hurt him then and it has kept on hurting him. The same hunger, the same loneliness, the same having no one to be accepted by and to be loved and wanted by. – Mother Teresa

He has told us that He is the hungry one. He is the naked one. He is the thirsty one. He is the one without a home. He is the one who is suffering. These are our treasures, she said, looking at the rows of pallets in the caravanserai. They are Jesus. – Mother Teresa

He then said, ‘But in India, where there are so many problems, can you ever be successful at what you do- isn’t it hopeless to try?’ She replied, Well, Senator, we’re not always called to be successful but we’re always called to be faithful. – Mother Teresa

He who is faultless does not care for the opinion of others. – Mother Teresa

He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your weakness. – Mother Teresa

Helping hands are better than Praying Lips – Mother Teresa

Holiness consists in doing God’s will joyfully. Faithfulness makes saints. The spiritual life is a union with Jesus: the divine and the human giving themselves to each other. The only thing Jesus asks of us is to give ourselves to him, in total poverty and total self-forgetfulness. – Mother Teresa

Holiness consists of doing the will of God with a smile. – Mother Teresa

Holiness does not consist in doing extraordinary things. It consists in accepting, with a smile, what Jesus sends us. It consists in accepting and following the will of God. – Mother Teresa

Holiness grows so fast where there is kindness. The world is lost for want of sweetness and kindness. Do not forget we need each other. – Mother Teresa

Holiness is doing God’s will with a smile. – Mother Teresa

Holiness is not a luxury for the few; it is not just for some people. It is meant for you and for me and for all of us. It is a simple duty, because if we learn to love, we learn to be holy. – Mother Teresa

Holiness is not a privilege of a few but a need for all. – Mother Teresa

Holiness is not the luxury of a few people, but a simple duty for you and me. – Mother Teresa

Holiness is not the luxury of the few; it is a simply duty. – Mother Teresa

Holy Angels, our advocates, our brothers, our counselors, our defenders, our enlighteners, our friends, our guides, our helpers, our intercessors – Pray for us. – Mother Teresa

Holy living consists in doing God’s work with a smile. – Mother Teresa

Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway. – Mother Teresa

How can I act in an impersonal manner? When a man dies in the street for want of food, how can I ignore him? When I find a starving or naked man in the street, I cannot walk past him. I think no human being can do that. – Mother Teresa

How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers. – Mother Teresa

How can you say there are too many children? That’s like saying there are too many flowers. – Mother Teresa

How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with LOVE, and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. – Mother Teresa

How many times we have picked up in the streets human beings who had been living like animals and were longing to die like angels! – Mother Teresa

How much love did you put into what you did? – Mother Teresa

How sad it is when someone comes to you looking for Jesus and all they see is you. – Mother Teresa

Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. – Mother Teresa

Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or sovereign. … You must weep that your own government, at present, seems blind to this truth. – Mother Teresa

Humility is truth, therefore in all sincerity we must be able to look up and say, I can do all things in Him who strengthens me. By yourself you can do nothing, have nothing but sin, weakness and misery. All the gifts of nature and grace you have them from God. – Mother Teresa

Hungry for love, He looks at you. Thirsty for kindness, He begs of you. Naked for loyalty, He hopes in you. Homeless for shelter in your heart, He asks of you. Will you be that one to Him? – Mother Teresa

Hungry not only for bread – but hungry for love. Naked not only for clothing – but naked of human dignity and respect. Homeless not only for want of a home of bricks – but homeless because of rejection. – Mother Teresa

I always begin my prayer in silence, for it is in the silence of the heart that God speaks. God is the friend of silence-we need to listen to God because it’s not what we say but what He says to us and through us that matters. – Mother Teresa

I always say if you are afraid of them (the unborn), give them to me. Please, don’t kill them. – Mother Teresa

I am a little pencil in God’s hands. He does the thinking. He does the writing. He does everything and sometimes it is really hard because it is a broken pencil and He has to sharpen it a little more. – Mother Teresa

I am Albanian by birth. Now I am a citizen of India. I am also a Catholic nun. In my work, I belong to the whole world. But in my heart, I belong to Christ. – Mother Teresa

I am busy with my work. My path is clear. – Mother Teresa

I am busy with my work. My path is clear. I see somebody dying, I pick him up. I find somebody hungry, I give him food. He can love and be loved. I don’t look at his color, I don’t look at his religion. – Mother Teresa

I am like a little pencil in God’s hand. He does the writing. The pencil has nothing to do with it. – Mother Teresa

I am not called to be successful, I am called to be faithful. – Mother Teresa

I am nothing; I am but an instrument, a tiny pencil in the hands of the Lord with which He writes what he likes. However imperfect we are, he writes beautifully. – Mother Teresa

I am only a little pencil in the hand of our Lord. He may cut or sharpen the pencil. He may write or draw whatever and whenever he wants. If the writing or drawing is good, we do not honor the pencil or the material that is used, but rather the one who used it. – Mother Teresa

I am sure that all people know deep down inside that the little child in the mother’s womb is a human being from the moment of conception, created in the image of God to love and be loved. Let us pray that nobody will be afraid to protect that little child, to help that little child to be born. Jesus said: ‘If you receive a little child in my name, you receive me.’ – Mother Teresa

I begin each day with holy Mass, receiving Jesus hidden under the appearance of a simple piece of bread. Then I go out into the streets and I find the same Jesus hidden in the dying destitute, the AIDS patients, the lepers, the abandoned children, the hungry, and the homeless. It’s the same Jesus. – Mother Teresa

I believe in person to person; every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is only one person in the world for me at that moment. – Mother Teresa

I belong to Jesus. He must have the right to use me without consulting me. – Mother Teresa

I can do only one thing, like a little dog follow closely the Master’s footsteps. Pray that I be a cheerful dog. – Mother Teresa

I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things. – Mother Teresa

I can’t help thousands, I can help only the one who stands before me. – Mother Teresa

I choose the poverty of our poor people. But I am grateful to receive it (the Nobel) in the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone. – Mother Teresa

I do make conversion, if conversion means really turning people to God – to have a clean heart and to love God. That’s the real conversion. – Mother Teresa

I do not agree with a big way of doing things. What matters is the individual. If we wait till we get numbers, then we will be lost in the numbers and we will never be able to show that love and respect for the person. – Mother Teresa

I don’t claim anything of the work. It is his work. I am like a little pencil in his hand. That is all. He does the thinking. He does the writing. The pencil has nothing to do with it. – Mother Teresa

I don’t do great things. I do small things with great love. – Mother Teresa

I don’t look at anything. Every person whether he is Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist, he is my brother, my sister. I think we all do like that. – Mother Teresa

I don’t think there is anyone who needs God’s help as much as I do. Sometimes I feel so helpless and weak. I think that is why God uses me. Because I cannot depend on my own strength, I rely on Him twenty-four hours a day. – Mother Teresa

‎I don’t think we can do anything more than what we are doing now. – Mother Teresa

I fear just one thing : Money! Greed – Mother Teresa

I fear just one thing: Money! Greed was what motivated Judas to sell Jesus – Mother Teresa

I feel called to help individuals, to love each human being. I never think in terms of crowds in general but in terms of persons. Were I to think about crowds, I would never begin anything. – Mother Teresa

I have a diplomatic passport for India, diplomatic passport for Albania. I have Vatican passport and to America, I can go any time. – Mother Teresa

I have a primary responsibility to myself; to make myself into the best person I can possibly be. Then and only then, will I have something worthwhile to share.- I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love. – Mother Teresa

I have come to realize more and more that the greatest disease and the greatest suffering is to be unwanted, unloved, uncared for, to be shunned by everybody, to be just nobody. – Mother Teresa

I have come to you, Jesus, to take your touch before I begin my day. Let your eyes rest upon my eyes for a while let me take to my work the assurance of your friendship. Fill my mind to last through the desert of noise. Let your blessed sunshine fill the peaks of my thoughts. And give me strength for those who need me. – Mother Teresa

I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love. – Mother Teresa

I have more often as my companion darkness. And when the night becomes very thick- and it seems to me as if I will end up in hell- then I simply offer myself to Jesus. – Mother Teresa

I have never been in a war before, but I have seen famine and death. I was asking (myself) what do they feel when they do this? I don’t understand it. They are all children of God. Why do they do it? I don’t understand. – Mother Teresa

I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you will trust God. – Mother Teresa

I have said often, and I am sure of it, that the greatest destroyer of peace in the world today is abortion. If a mother can kill her own child, what is there to stop you and me from killing each other? The only one who has the right to take life is the The One who has created it. – Mother Teresa

I have the feeling that we are in such a hurry that we do not have time to look at one another and smile. – Mother Teresa

I have told everybody that what we are doing is for the love of God and works of love are always to accept and respect others. – Mother Teresa

I held the Host with two fingers and thought: How small Jesus made Himself, in order to show us that He doesn’t expect great things of us, but rather little things with great love. – Mother Teresa

I hope that what you give me comes not from your surplus but it is the fruit of a sacrifice made for the love of God. You must give what costs you, go without something you like, then you will truly be brothers to the poor who are deprived of even the things they need. – Mother Teresa

I just take one day. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not come. We have only today to love Jesus. – Mother Teresa

I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much. – Mother Teresa

I know every one of your problems. I know your need and your worries. And yes, I know all your sins. But I tell you again that I love you – not for what you have or haven’t done – I love you for you, for the beauty and dignity my Father gave you by creating you in his own image. – Mother Teresa

I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much. – Mother Teresa

I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much. – Mother Teresa

I know i am touching the living body of Christ in the broken bodies of the hungry and the suffering. – Mother Teresa

I know I would not be able to work one week if it were not for that continual force coming from Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. – Mother Teresa

I love all religions, but I am in love with my own. – Mother Teresa

I love all religions. … If people become better Hindus, better Muslims, better Buddhists by our acts of love, then there is something else growing there. She upheld that there are many ways to God’: All is God – Buddists, Hindus, Christians, etc., all have access to the same God. – Mother Teresa

I must be willing to give whatever it takes to do good to others. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts. Otherwise, there is no true love in me, and I bring injustice, not peace, to those around me. – Mother Teresa

I never get mixed up in what governments should or should not do. Instead of spending time [on] those questions, I say, Let me do [something] now. – Mother Teresa

I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can love only one person at a time. I can feed only one person at a time. Just one, one, one. – Mother Teresa

I never looked at the masses as my responsibility. I can only love one person at a time. So I began. I picked up one person. Maybe if I didn’t pick up that one person, I wouldn’t have picked up forty-two thousand. – Mother Teresa

I now God will not give me anything I cannot handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much. – Mother Teresa

I picked up a man from the street, and he was eaten up alive from worms. Nobody could stand him, and he was smelling so badly. I went to him to clean him, and he asked, ‘Why do you do this?’ I said, ‘Because I love you.’ – Mother Teresa

I pray that you will understand the words of Jesus, Love one another as I have loved you. Ask yourself How has he loved me? Do I really love others in the same way? Unless this love is among us, we can kill ourselves with work and it will only be work, not love. Work without love is slavery. – Mother Teresa

I realized that I had the call to take care of the sick and the dying, the hungry, the naked, the homeless – to be God’s Love in action to the poorest of the poor. That was the beginning of the Missionaries of Charity. – Mother Teresa

I remember I picked up a person from the street who was nearly eaten up with maggots, and he said, I have lived like an animal, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for. – Mother Teresa

I see somebody dying, I pick him up. – Mother Teresa

I shall keep the silence of my heart with greater care, so that in the silence of my heart I hear His words of comfort, and from the fullness of my heart I comfort Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor. For in the silence and purity of the heart God speaks. – Mother Teresa

I still think that the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, just having no one… That is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience. – Mother Teresa

I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people. – Mother Teresa

I think it is very good when people suffer. To me that is like the kiss of Jesus. – Mother Teresa

I think that before people were speaking much about the poor, but now more and more people are speaking to the poor. That is the great difference. – Mother Teresa

I think the world today is upside down, and is suffering so much, because there is so very little love in the homes and in family life. – Mother Teresa

I trust that God wouldn’t give me more than I can handle. I just wish he didn’t have such faith in me. – Mother Teresa

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God. – Mother Teresa

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. – Mother Teresa

I want you to be concerned about your next-door neighbor. Do you know your next-door neighbor? – Mother Teresa

I want you to find the poor here, right in your own home first. And begin love there. Be that good news to your own people. – Mother Teresa

I was asked why I did not give a rod with which to fish, in the hands of the poor, rather than give the fish itself as this makes them remain poor. So I told them: The people whom we pick up are not able to stand with a rod. So today I will give them fish and when they are able to stand, then I shall send them to you and you can give them the rod. That is your job. Let me do my work today. – Mother Teresa

I will never attend an anti-war rally; if you have a peace rally, invite me. – Mother Teresa

I will never tire of repeating this: what the poor need the most is not pity but love. They need to feel respect for their human dignity, which is neither less nor different from the dignity of any other human being. – Mother Teresa

I will never understand all the good that a simple smile can accomplish. – Mother Teresa

I will not pray clarity for you. Clarity is the crutch of the Christian. But I will pray trust for you, that your trust will increase. – Mother Teresa

If a Hindu wants to find the way to God, he has the right to go to any priest, nun or any other person. – Mother Teresa

If a mother can kill her own child – what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me – there is nothing between. – Mother Teresa

If a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for us to kill each other? – Mother Teresa

If abortion is not wrong, nothing is wrong. – Mother Teresa

If each of us would only sweep our own doorstep, the whole World would be clean. – Mother Teresa

If everyone could see the image of God in his neighbor, do you think we should still need tanks and generals? – Mother Teresa

If I can give you any advice, I beg you to get closer to the Eucharist and to Jesus… We must pray to Jesus to give us that tenderness of the Eucharist. – Mother Teresa

If I ever become a Saint – I will surely be one of darkness. I will continually be absent from heaven – to light the light of those in darkness on earth. – Mother Teresa

If I look at the mass I will never act. – Mother Teresa

If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will. – Mother Teresa

If I’d never have picked up the first person, I’d never have picked up the 42,000 in Calcutta. – Mother Teresa

If in coming face to face with God we accept Him in our lives, then we are converting. We become a better Hindu, a better Muslim, a better Catholic, a better whatever we are. … What God is in your mind you must accept. – Mother Teresa

If in your family someone has done something wrong, forgive that person. Show that person the forgiving Heart of God. – Mother Teresa

If now we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten how to see God in one another. – Mother Teresa

If our bones were not sending whispers of doubt to our hearts, there would be no need for prayer at all. – Mother Teresa

If sometimes our poor people have had to die of starvation, it is not that God didn’t care for them, but because you and I didn’t give, were not an instrument of love in the hands of God, to give them that bread, to give them that clothing; because we did not recognize him, when once more Christ came in distressing disguise, in the hungry man, in the lonely man, in the homeless child, and seeking for shelter. – Mother Teresa

If there are poor on the moon, we will go there too. – Mother Teresa

If there has been resentment in our hearts or if we have not accepted humiliation, we will not learn humility. of Calcutta – Mother Teresa

If we accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill each other? Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, rather, to use violence to get what they want. – Mother Teresa

If we are Christians, we must look like Christ – this is my deep conviction. – Mother Teresa

If we can not love the person whom we see, how can we love God whom we can not see? – Mother Teresa

If we were able to see God’s image in our neighbor, do you think weapons and generals would be needed? – Mother Teresa

If we were humble, nothing would change us-neither praise nor discouragement. If someone were to criticize us, we would not feel discouraged. If someone would praise us, we also would not feel proud. – Mother Teresa

If you are Catholic, and some other person comes to you seeking guidance, naturally you take him straight away to someone who can show him God’s love. – Mother Teresa

If you are discouraged it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own power. Your self-sufficiency, your selfishness and your intellectual pride will inhibit His coming to live in your heart because God cannot fill what is already full. It is as simple as that. – Mother Teresa

If you are discouraged it is a sign of pride, because it shows you trust in your own powers. – Mother Teresa

If you are discouraged it is a sign of pride, because it shows you trust in your own powers. Never bother about other people’s opinions. Be humble and you will never be disturbed. Remember St. Aloysius, who said he would continue to play billiards even if he knew he was going to die. Do you play well? Sleep well? Eat well? These are duties. Nothing is small for God. – Mother Teresa

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway. – Mother Teresa

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. – Mother Teresa

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway. – Mother Teresa

If you are humble, nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed, you won’t be discouraged; if anyone calls you a saint, you won’t put yourself on a pedestal. If you are a saint, thank God; if you are a sinner, don’t remain one. Christ tells us to aim very high, not to be like Abraham or David or any of the saints, but to be like our heavenly Father. – Mother Teresa

If you are hungry to hear the voice of God, you will hear. To hear, you have to cut out all other things. – Mother Teresa

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. – Mother Teresa

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. – Mother Teresa

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives: Be kind anyway. If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies: Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank people will try to cheat you: Be honest anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight: Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous of you: Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten by tomorrow: Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough: Give your best anyway. – Mother Teresa

If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. – Mother Teresa

If you are looking for vocations, as a community have adoration every day. Once the Missionaries of Charity started daily adoration, their vocations doubled. – Mother Teresa

If you are successful, you will win some false friends & some true enemies: Succeed anyway – Mother Teresa

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. – Mother Teresa

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. – Mother Teresa

If you ask children in the west where’s God, they’d point to the sky. If you ask children in India, they point at themselves. – Mother Teresa

If you can’t do great things, do little things with great love. If you can’t do them with great love, do them with a little love. If you can’t do them with a little love, do them anyway. – Mother Teresa

If you cannot feed one hundred hungry people, then just feed one really well. – Mother Teresa

If you can’t do great things, do little things with great love. If you can’t do them with great love, do them with a little love. If you can’t do them with a little love, do them anyway. – Mother Teresa

If you can’t feed 100 just feed ONE. – Mother Teresa

If you can’t feed a hundred people, feed just one. – Mother Teresa

If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one. – Mother Teresa

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. – Mother Teresa

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway. – Mother Teresa

If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. – Mother Teresa

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. – Mother Teresa

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. – Mother Teresa

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous. Be happy anyway. – Mother Teresa

If you have a sick or lonely person at home, be there. Maybe just to hold a hand, maybe just to give a smile, that is the greatest, the most beautiful work. – Mother Teresa

If you have not the experience, ask. There is no shame in asking, but do not pretend you know when you don’t. – Mother Teresa

If you hold an anti-war rally, I shall not attend. But if you hold a Pro-Peace rally invite me. – Mother Teresa

If you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, just more love – Mother Teresa

If you pray more you will pray better. – Mother Teresa

If you really love one another, you will not be able to avoid making sacrifices. – Mother Teresa

If you think well of others, you will also speak well of others and to others. From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. If your heart is full of love, you will speak of love. – Mother Teresa

If you try, you will find it impossible to do one great thing. You can only do many small things with great love. – Mother Teresa

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it. – Mother Teresa

If you want to have world peace, go to your house and love your family. – Mother Teresa

If your Eyes are Positive, You will Love the World. – Mother Teresa

If you’re too busy to pray…you’re too busy – Mother Teresa

I’m a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world. – Mother Teresa

In … silence we find a new energy and a real unity. God’s energy becomes our, allowing us to perform things well. – Mother Teresa

In Calcutta alone, we have given more than 1,000 children in adoption. I cannot calculate how many babies we get a year. But we never refuse anybody. Everybody is most welcome. – Mother Teresa

In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth, a life full of the most atrocious tortures on earth, will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel. – Mother Teresa

In loving one another through our works we bring an increase of grace and a growth in divine love. – Mother Teresa

In order to keep the lamp burning you have to keep putting the oil in it. – Mother Teresa

In our home (for the dying at Kali Ghat) in Calcutta, there is great peace, unity and love. Many Hindu families bring food, clothing nonstop to our home for the dying. This is an act of love. I didn’t ask them. They have only heard about what I am doing and they all come. – Mother Teresa

In response to the question, ‘How can we help to promote world peace?’ Mother Teresa replied, ‘Go home and love your children. – Mother Teresa

In the developed countries there is a poverty of intimacy, a poverty of spirit, of loneliness, of lack of love. There is no greater sickness in the world today than that one. – Mother Teresa

In the end, dear friend, it is always between us and God, not between us and them. – Mother Teresa

In the final analysis it is between you and God, it was never between you and them anyway. – Mother Teresa

In the home begins the disruption of the peace of the world. – Mother Teresa

In the poor we meet Jesus in his most distressing disguises. – Mother Teresa

In the poorest of the poor we see Jesus in distressed guise. – Mother Teresa

In the West we have a tendency to be profit-oriented, where everything is measured according to the results and we get caught up in being more and more active to generate results. In the East-especially in India-I find that people are more content to just be, to just sit around under a banyan tree for half a day chatting to each other. We Westerners would probably call that wasting time. But there is value to it. Being with someone, listening without a clock and without anticipation of results, teaches us about love. The success of love is in the loving-it is not in the result of loving. – Mother Teresa

In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love. – Mother Teresa

In this world, there is no clarity. There is only love and action. – Mother Teresa

It is a just retribution for improper sexual misconduct – Mother Teresa

It is Christmas every time you let God love others through you. – Mother Teresa

It is Christmas every time you let God love others through you…yes, it is Christmas every time you smile at your brother and offer him your hand. – Mother Teresa

It is easy to be proud & harsh & selfish – so easy. But we have been created for better things. – Mother Teresa

It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. – Mother Teresa

It is impossible to love God without loving our neighbor. – Mother Teresa

It is impossible to walk rapidly and be unhappy. – Mother Teresa

It is more difficult to fight poverty in a rich country than in a poor one. – Mother Teresa

It is much easier to conquer a country than to conquer ourselves. – Mother Teresa

It is not enough for us to say: I love God, but I do not love my neighbour. St. John says you are a liar if you say you love God and you don’t love your neighbour. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbour whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live. – Mother Teresa

It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love is put in the giving. – Mother Teresa

It is not possible to engage in the direct apostolate without being a soul of prayer. We must be aware of oneness with Christ, as he was aware of oneness with his Father. Our activity is truly apostolic only insofar as we permit him to work in us and through us with his power, with his desire, with his love. – Mother Teresa

It is not possible to speak of the right to choose when a clear moral evil is involved, when what is at stake is the commandment, Do not kill! – Mother Teresa

It is not what to do, but how much love we put into the doing. We can do not greats, only small things with great love. – Mother Teresa

It is not what we do but how much love we put into it. – Mother Teresa

It is not what we do, it is how much love we put in the doing. – Mother Teresa

It is only by frequent deaths of ourselves and our self-centered desires that we can come to live more fully. – Mother Teresa

It is possible that our children, our husband, our wife, do not hunger for bread, do not need clothes, do not lack a house. But are we equally sure that none of them feels alone, abandoned, neglected, needing some affection? That, too, is poverty. – Mother Teresa

It is very compelling that before Jesus explained God’s words, before he explained the beatitudes to the crowd, he felt compassion for them and fed them (Matthew 5). Only after they were fed did he start to teach them. – Mother Teresa

It is very important that children learn from their fathers and mothers how to love one another- not in the school, not from the teacher, but from you. It is very important that you share with your children the joy of that smile. There will be misunderstandings; every family has its cross, its suffering. Always be the first to forgive with a smile. Be cheerful, be happy. – Mother Teresa

It isn’t how much we do, but how much Love we put into what we do that really counts. – Mother Teresa

It takes a checkbook to change the world – Mother Teresa

It takes oil to keep the lamps burning. – Mother Teresa

It was easier to deal with poverty and death in India that the lack of spirituality in America. – Mother Teresa

It’s a kingly act to assist the fallen. – Mother Teresa

It’s not about how much you do, but how much love you put into what you do that counts. Life isn’t worth living, unless lived for other people. – Mother Teresa

It’s only a drop in the ocean – but the ocean wouldn’t be the same without that drop. – Mother Teresa

Jesus announced which will be the criteria of the final judgment of our lives: we will be judged according to love.We will be judged according to the poor of spirit or money. – Mother Teresa

Jesus continues to live his passion. He continues to fall, poor and hungry, just like he fell on the way to Calvary. Are we at his side to volunteer to help him? Do we walk next to him with our sacrifice with our piece of bread – real bread – to help him get over his weakness? – Mother Teresa

Jesus has made Himself the Bread of Life to give us life. Night and day, He is there. If you really want to grow in love, come back to the Eucharist, come back to that Adoration. – Mother Teresa

Jesus has said Come, blessed of my Father, take the seat in the kingdom prepared for you, because I was hungry you gave me food, I was thirsty you have me drink, I was naked you clothed me, I was homeless you took me home and I was sick you visited me. And we are just doing that. – Mother Teresa

Jesus has very clearly said in the gospel. Whatever you do, do to the least of my brethren. Clear? That was the work of Jesus. – Mother Teresa

Jesus is my All in All;
Jesus is my Everything.
Jesus is my God,
Jesus is my Life,
Jesus is my only Love,
Jesus is my Spouse,
Jesus loved everyone, but he loved children most of all. Today we know that unborn children are the targets of destruction. We must thank our parents for wanting us, for loving us and for taking such good care of us. – Mother Teresa

Jesus wants me to tell you again…how much is the love He has for each one of you-beyond all what you can imagine…Not only He loves you, even more–He longs for you. He misses you when you don’t come close. He thirsts for you. He loves you always, even when you don’t feel worthy… – Mother Teresa

Jesus wants me to tell you again…how much is the love He has for each one of you-beyond all what you can imagine…Not only He loves you, even more – He longs for you. He misses you when you don’t come close. He thirsts for you. He loves you always, even when you don’t feel worthy. – Mother Teresa

Just show up and things will happen. – Mother Teresa

Justice without love is not justice. Love without justice is not love – Mother Teresa

Keep Giving Jesus to the people, not by words but by your example, by being in love with Jesus, by radiating holiness and spreading his fragrance of love everywhere you go. Just keep the joy of Jesus as your strength, be happy and at peace. – Mother Teresa

Keep in mind that our community is not composed of those who are already saints, but of those who are trying to become saints. Therefore let us be extremely patient with each other’s faults and failures. – Mother Teresa

Keep the corners of your mouth turned up. Speak in a low, persuasive tone. Listen; be teachable. Laugh at good stories and learn to tell them…For as long as you are green, you can grow. – Mother Teresa

Keep the joy of loving God in your heart and share this joy with all you meet especially your family. Be holy let us pray. – Mother Teresa

Kind words are short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. – Mother Teresa

Let Him empty and transform you ;and afterwards fill the chalice of your hearts to the brim, that you in your turn, may give of your abundance. Seek Him. Knowledge will make you strong as death. Love Him trustfully without looking back, without fear. Believe that Jesus and Jesus alone is life. Serve Jesus, casting aside and forgetting all that troubles or worries you, make loved the love that is not loved. – Mother Teresa

Let me thus praise You in the way You love best: by shining on those around me. Let me preach You without preaching, not by words, but by my example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You. Amen. – Mother Teresa

Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. – Mother Teresa

Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier. – Mother Teresa

Let nothing perturb you, nothing frighten you. All things pass. God does not change. Patience achieves everything. – Mother Teresa

Let us be very sincere in our dealings with each other and have the courage to accept each other as we are. – Mother Teresa

Let us be very sincere in our dealings with each other, and have the courage to accept each other as we are. Do not be surprised or become preoccupied at each other’s failures – rather, see and find in each other the good, for each one of us is created in the image of God. – Mother Teresa

Let us love one another as God loves each one of us. And where does this love begin? In our own home. How does it begin? By praying together. – Mother Teresa

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God – the rest will be given. – Mother Teresa

Let us not be afraid to be humble, small, helpless to prove our love for God. The cup of water you give the sick, the way you lift a dying man, the way you feed a baby, the way you teach a dull child, the way you give medicine to a sufferer of leprosy, the joy with which you smile at your own at home – all this is God’s love in the world today. – Mother Teresa

Let us not love by words alone, but let us love until it hurts. – Mother Teresa

Let us not use bombs and guns to overcome the world. Let us use love and compassion. Peace begins with a smile. – Mother Teresa

Let us not use bombs and guns to overcome the world. Let us use love and compassion. Peace begins with a smile-smile five times a day at someone you don’t really want to smile at at all-do it for peace. So let us radiate peace…and extinguish in the world and in the hearts of all men all hatred and love for power. – Mother Teresa

Let us preach you, Dear Jesus, without preaching…. not by words but by our example. – Mother Teresa

Let us remain as empty as possible so that God can fill us up. – Mother Teresa

Let us take whatever God gives and give whatever he takes with a smile. That is holiness. – Mother Teresa

Let’s do something beautiful for God. – Mother Teresa

Let’s Love one another; that will accomplish miracles. – Mother Teresa

Life is a challenge, we must take it. – Mother Teresa

Like her [Mary], let us be full of zeal to go in haste to give Jesus to others. She was full of grace when, at the Annunciation, she received Jesus. Like her. we too become full of grace every time we receive Holy Communion. It is the same Jesus whom she received and whom we receive at Mass. As soon as she received Him. she went with haste to give Him to John. For us also. As soon as we receive Jesus in Holy Communion, let us go in haste to give Him to our sisters, to our poor, to the sick, to the dying, to the lepers, to the unwanted, and the unloved. By this we make Jesus present in the world today. – Mother Teresa

Like Jesus we belong to the world living not for ourselves but for others. The joy of the Lord is our strength. – Mother Teresa

Listen in silence because if your heart is full of other things you cannot hear the voice of God – Mother Teresa

Little things are indeed little, but to be faithful in little things is a great thing. – Mother Teresa

Living intensely each present day means letting Christ dwell within you. His words are so clear: Today I would like to enter your home. – Mother Teresa

Loneliness and the feeling that you’re no use to anyone – the worst kind of poverty. – Mother Teresa

Loneliness is the leprosy of the modern world. – Mother Teresa

Loneliness is the most terrible form of poverty. – Mother Teresa

Loneliness is the most terrible poverty. – Mother Teresa

Look at the cross and you will know what one soul means to Jesus. – Mother Teresa

Lord give me this seeing faith, then my work will never be monotonous. I will find joy in humoring the fancies and gratifying the wishes of all poor sufferers. O beloved sick, how doubly dear you are to me, when you personify Christ; and what a privilege is mine to be allowed to tend you. – Mother Teresa

Lord, help us to accept the pains and conflicts that come to us each day as opportunities to grow as people and become more like you. – Mother Teresa

Lord, help us to see in your crucifixion and resurrection an example of how to endure and seemingly to die in the agony and conflict of daily life, so that we may live more fully and creatively. You accepted patiently and humbly the rebuffs of human life, as well as the torture of the cross. Help us to accept the pains and conflicts that come to us each day as opportunity to grow as people and become more like you-make us realize that it is only by frequent deaths of ourselves, and our self-centered desires that we can come to live more fully, only by dying with you that we can rise with you. – Mother Teresa

Love until it hurts. – Mother Teresa

Make sure that you let God’s grace work in your souls by accepting whatever He gives you, and giving Him whatever He takes from you. True holiness consists in doing God’s work with a smile. – Mother Teresa

Many people (who go to her as volunteers) have found peace, joy and unity in their families by helping the poor. – Mother Teresa

Many people are concerned with children of India, with the children of Africa where quite a few die of hunger, and so on. Many people are also concerned about the violence in this great country of the United States. These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is the greatest destroyer of peace today- abortion which brings people to such blindness. – Mother Teresa

Many people are very, very concerned with the children in India, with the children in Africa where quite a number die, maybe of malnutrition, of hunger and so on, but millions are dying deliberately by the will of the mother. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today. Because if a mother can kill her own child – what is left for me to kill you and you kill me — there is nothing between. – Mother Teresa

Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus. – Mother Teresa

May God give back to you in love all the love you have given. – Mother Teresa

May today be peace within. May you trust your highest power that you are exactly where you are meant to be… May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith. May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you… May you be content knowing you are a child of God… Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise, and love. It is there for each and every one of you. – Mother Teresa

Maybe if I didn’t pick up that one person, I wouldn’t have picked up forty-two thousand. – Mother Teresa

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones. – Mother Teresa

Mothers are at the heart of the family. Children need their mothers. If the mother is there, the children will be there too. For the family to be whole, the children and the mother also need the father to be present in the home. – Mother Teresa

My key to heaven is that I loved Jesus in the night. – Mother Teresa

My mother and sister must be very happy to be home with God, and I am sure their love and prayers are always with me. When I go home to God, for death is nothing else but going home to God, the bond of love will be unbroken for all eternity. – Mother Teresa

My television is the tabernacle. – Mother Teresa

Never be so busy as not to think of others. – Mother Teresa

Never Let Anyone Come to You Without Coming Away Better and Happier – Mother Teresa

Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of Christ risen. – Mother Teresa

Never to stand on one’s dignity. – Mother Teresa

No matter how tired you are, no matter how physically exhausting this work may be, it’s beautiful to bring a smile into someone’s life, to care for someone in need. What greater joy can there be? – Mother Teresa

No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own work. – Mother Teresa

Nobody can change your religion unless you want to and God gives you the grace. It’s between you and God alone. Nobody can force you. – Mother Teresa

Nobody can convert you except God. – Mother Teresa

Nobody can force you, not even the holy prophets. – Mother Teresa

None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful. – Mother Teresa

Not handouts, but rather hands held. – Mother Teresa

Not to want to manage other people’s affairs. – Mother Teresa

Nothing makes you happier than when you really reach out in mercy to someone who is badly hurt. – Mother Teresa

O God, how easily I make them happy! Give me strength to be always the light of their lives and so lead them to You! – Mother Teresa

Of all the diseases I have known, loneliness is the worst. – Mother Teresa

Often you can see power lines running alongside the street. Unless current is flowing through them, there is no light. The power line is you and I! The current is God! We have the power to allow the current to flow through us and thus to generate the light of the world: JESUS – or to refuse to be used and, thus, allow the darkness to spread. – Mother Teresa

On certain continents poverty is more spiritual than material, a poverty that consists of loneliness, discouragement, and the lack of meaning in life. – Mother Teresa

On the British Royal Divorce (Charles and Dianna). She is such a sad soul. It is good that it is over. Nobody was happy anyhow. I know I should preach family love and unity, but in their case. . . . – Mother Teresa

Once I asked my counsellor for advice about my vocation. I asked, ‘How can I know if God is calling me and for what he is calling me?’ He answered, ‘You will know by your happiness. If you are happy with the idea that God calls you to serve him and your neighbour, this will be the proof of your vocation.’ – Mother Teresa

Once we take our eyes away from ourselves, from our interests, from our own rights, privileges, ambitions – then they will become clear to see Jesus around us. – Mother Teresa

One day I met a lady who was dying of cancer in a most terrible condition. And I told her, I say, You know, this terrible pain is only the kiss of Jesus – a sign that you have come so close to Jesus on the cross that he can kiss you. – Mother Teresa

One day there springs up the desire for money and for all that money can provide — the superfluous, luxury in eating, luxury in dressing, trifles. Needs increase because one thing calls for another. The result is uncontrollable dissatisfaction. Let us remain as empty as possible so that God can fill us up. – Mother Teresa

One filled with the joy preaches without preaching. – Mother Teresa

One of the realities we’re all called to go through is to move from repulsion to compassion and from compassion to wonderment. – Mother Teresa

One thing I ask you to do, you people who have the pen in your hand, allow God to use you so that you never write anything that will destroy, that will hurt, but always take the trouble to write something beautiful, to help the people to see better, to love better, to come closer… to each other. – Mother Teresa

One truly must have suffered oneself to help others. – Mother Teresa

Only humility will lead us to unity, and unity will lead to peace. – Mother Teresa

Open your hearts to the love God instills . . . God loves you tenderly. What He gives you is not to be kept under lock and key, but to be shared. – Mother Teresa

Our Father, here I am, at your disposal, your child, to use me to continue your loving the world, by giving Jesus to me and through me, to each other that we allow Jesus to love in us and through us with the love with which His Father loves him. – Mother Teresa

Our hours of adoration will be special hours of reparation for sins, and intercession for the needs of the whole world, exposing the sin-sick and suffering humanity to the healing, sustaining and transforming rays of Jesus, radiating from the Eucharist. – Mother Teresa

Our life of contemplation shall retain the following characteristics: —missionary: by going out physically or in spirit in search of souls all over the universe. —contemplative: by gathering the whole universe at the very center of our hearts where the Lord of the universe abides, and allowing the pure water of divine grace to flow plentifully and unceasingly from the source itself, on the whole of his creation. —universal: by praying and contemplating with all and for all, especially with and for the spiritually poorest of the poor. – Mother Teresa

Our poverty is freedom. This is our poverty – the giving up our freedom to dispose of things, to choose, to possess – Mother Teresa

Our progress in holiness depends on God and ourselves – on God’s grace and on our will to be holy. – Mother Teresa

Our vocation, to be beautiful, must be full of thought for others. – Mother Teresa

Pain and suffering have come into your life, but remember pain, sorrow, suffering are but the kiss of Jesus – a sign that you have come so close to Him that He can kiss you. – Mother Teresa

Pain and suffering have come into your life, but remember pain, sorrow, suffering are but the kiss of Jesus – a sign that you have come so close to Him that He can kiss you. – Mother Teresa

Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world. – Mother Teresa

People are generally irrational, unreasonable and selfish. They deserve to be loved, anyway. – Mother Teresa

People are hungry for God. Do you see that? Quite often we look but do not see. We are all passing through this world. We need to open our eyes and see. – Mother Teresa

People are hungry for God. People are hungry for love. Are you aware of that? Do you know that? Do you see that? Do you have eyes to see? Quite often we look but we don’t see. We are all passing through this world. We need to open our eyes and see. – Mother Teresa

People are hungry for God. What [a] terrible meeting [it] would be with our neighbour if we give them only ourselves. – Mother Teresa

People are hungry for Love. We need to open our eyes and see. – Mother Teresa

People are hungry for something more beautiful, for something greater than people round about can give. There is a great hunger for God in the world today. Everywhere there is much suffering, but there is also great hunger for God and love for each other. – Mother Teresa

People are not hungry just for bread, they are hungry for love. – Mother Teresa

People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people maybe jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today maybe forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway. – Mother Teresa

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. – Mother Teresa

People are unrealistic, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway.

People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Love them anyway…. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway…. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. .. Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you’ve got anyway. – Mother Teresa

People crave attention and appreciation more than they do bread. – Mother Teresa

People everywhere are the same; they are all people to be loved. They are all hungry for love. – Mother Teresa

People have forgotten what the human touch is, what it is to smile, for somebody to smile at them, somebody to recognize them, somebody to wish them well. The terrible thing is to be unwanted. – Mother Teresa

People who love each other fully and truly are the happiest people in the world. They may have little, they may have nothing, but they are happy people. Everything depends on how we love one another. – Mother Teresa

People who really want help may attack you if you help them. Help them anyway. – Mother Teresa

Persuaded of our nothingness and with the blessing of obedience we attempt all things, doubting nothing, for with God all things are possible. We will allow the good God to make plans for the future, for yesterday has gone, tomorrow has not yet come, and we have only today to make him known loved, and served. Grateful for the thousands of opportunities Jesus gives us to bring hope into a multitude of lives by our concern for the individual sufferer, we will help our troubled world at the brink of despair to discover a new reason to live or to die with a smile of contentment on its lips. – Mother Teresa

Please don’t kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child. – Mother Teresa

Poverty doesn’t only consist of being hungry for bread, but rather it is a tremendous hunger for human dignity. We need to love and to be somebody for someone else. This is where we make our mistake and shove people aside. Not only have we denied the poor a piece of bread, but by thinking that they have no worth and leaving them abandoned in the streets, we have denied them the human dignity that is rightfully theirs as children of God. – Mother Teresa

Profound joy of the heart is like a magnet that indicates the path of life. – Mother Teresa

Put your sins in the chalice for the precious blood to wash away. One drop is capable of washing away the sins of the world. – Mother Teresa

Put yourself completely under the influence of Jesus, so that he may think his thoughts in your mind, do his work through your hands, for you will be all-powerful with him to strengthen you. – Mother Teresa

Real prayer is union with God. – Mother Teresa

Riches, both material and spiritual, can choke you if you do not use them fairly. For not even God can put anything in a heart that is already full. – Mother Teresa

Saints are only sinners who keep trying. – Mother Teresa

See how nature – trees, flowers, grass – grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence…we need silence to be able to touch souls. – Mother Teresa

Seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, all the time, and his hand in every happening; This is what it means to be contemplative in the heart of the world. Seeing and adoring the presence of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread, and in the distressing disguise of the poor. – Mother Teresa

Self knowledge puts us on our knees, and it is very necessary for love. For knowledge of God gives love, and knowledge of self gives humility – Mother Teresa

She knows how to suffer and at the same time how to laugh. – Mother Teresa

She lived almost fifty years of her life completely dedicated to the care of the poor and the marginalized. Astonishingly, for those nearly fifty years she identified completely with the poor she served by her own experience of being seemingly unwanted and unloved by God. In a mystical way — through this painful interior darkness — she tasted their greatest poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. – Mother Teresa

She suffers and she laughs. – Mother Teresa

Silence came before creation, and the heavens were spread without a word – Mother Teresa

Silence gives us a new outlook on everything. We need silence to be able to touch souls. The essential thing is not what we say but what God says to us and through us. – Mother Teresa

Silence gives us a new way of looking at something. – Mother Teresa

Silence of the ears, by listening always to the voice of God and to the cry of the poor and the needy, and closing them to all other voices that come from fallen human nature, such as gossip, tale bearing, and uncharitable words. – Mother Teresa

Silence of the eyes, by seeking always the beauty and goodness of God everywhere, and closing them to the faults of others and to all that is sinful and disturbing to the soul. – Mother Teresa

Silence of the heart is necessary so you can hear God everywhere – in the closing of the door, in the person who needs you, in the birds that sing, in the flowers, in the animals. – Mother Teresa

Silence of the heart, by loving God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength; loving one another as God loves; and avoiding all selfishness, hatred, envy, jealousy, and greed. – Mother Teresa

Silence of the mind, by opening it to the truth and knowledge of God in prayer and contemplation, like Mary who pondered the marvels of the Lord in her heart, and by closing it to all untruths, distractions, destructive thoughts, rash judgments, false suspicions of others, vengeful thoughts, and desires. – Mother Teresa

Silence of the tongue, by praising God and speaking the life-giving Word of God that is the truth, that enlightens and inspires, brings peace, hope, and joy; and by refraining from self-defense and every word that causes darkness, turmoil, pain, and death. – Mother Teresa

Since we cannot see Christ, we cannot express our love to Him. But we do see our neighbor, and we can do for him what we would do for Christ if He were visible. – Mother Teresa

Small things done with great love will change the world. – Mother Teresa

Smile at each other, smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other – it doesn’t matter who it is and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other. – Mother Teresa

Smile at each other. Smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other – it doesn’t matter who it is – and that will help to grow up in greater love for each other. – Mother Teresa

Smiling novices. I can hear the music of your laughter of joy. Learn, my children, to be holy, for true holiness consists of doing God’s work with a smile. – Mother Teresa

So many signatures for such a small heart. – Mother Teresa

Some people come into your life as lessons. Some come in your life as lessons. – Mother Teresa

Somebody loves us, too – God Himself. We have been created to love and to be loved – Mother Teresa

Sometimes it is harder for us to smile at those who live with us, the immediate members of our families, than it is to smile at those who are not so close to us. Let us never forget: love begins at home. – Mother Teresa

Sometimes people can hunger for more than bread. – Mother Teresa

Sometimes people can hunger for more than bread. It is possible that our children, our husband, our wife, do not hunger for bread, do not need clothes, do not lack a house. But are we equally sure that none of them feels alone, abandoned, neglected, needing some affection? That, too, is poverty. – Mother Teresa

Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of your greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don’t only give your care, but give your heart as well. – Mother Teresa

Spread love everywhere you go; first of all in your house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor. Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. – Mother Teresa

Spread love whenever you go. – Mother Teresa

Stay very close to Our Lady. If you do this, you can do great things for God and the good of people. – Mother Teresa

Success will win you false friends and true enemies – succeed anyway. – Mother Teresa

Suffering can become a means to greater love and greater generosity. – Mother Teresa

Suffering is nothing by itself. But suffering shared with the passion of Christ is a wonderful gift, the most beautiful gift, a token of love. – Mother Teresa

Suffering will come, trouble will come – that’s part of life; a sign that you are alive. If you have no suffering and no trouble, the devil is taking it easy. You are in his hand. – Mother Teresa

Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative of the dignity of my high vocation, and its many responsibilities. Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience. – Mother Teresa

Thank God we don’t serve God with our feelings, otherwise I don’t know where I would be. – Pray for me. – Mother Teresa

The beginning of peace is a smile – Mother Teresa

The beginning of prayer is silence. If we really want to pray we must first learn to listen, for in the silence of the heart God speaks. And to be able to see that silence, to be able to hear God we need a clean heart; for a clean heart can see God, can hear God, can listen to God; and then only from the fullness of our heart can we speak to God. But we cannot speak unless we have listened, unless we have made that connection with God in the silence of our heart. – Mother Teresa

The best way to show your gratitude to God and people is to accept everything with joy….We may not be able to give much but we can always give the joy that springs from a heart that is in love with God. All over the world people are hungry and thirsty for God’s love. We meet that hunger by spreading joy. Joy is one of the best safeguards against temptation. – Mother Teresa

The best way to succeed in life is to act on the advice we give to others. – Mother Teresa

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or cancer or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling or being unwanted, uncared for, deserted by everybody. The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference towards one’s neighbor who lives at the roadside, the victim of exploitation, corruption, poverty, and disease. – Mother Teresa

The child is the beauty of God present in the world, that greatest gift to a family – Mother Teresa

The coming of Jesus at Bethlehem brought joy to the world and to every human heart. may His coming this Christmas bring to each one of us that peace and joy that He desires to give. – Mother Teresa

The Cross will be for us as it was for Christ: proof of the greatest love. – Mother Teresa

The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved– they are Jesus in disguise. – Mother Teresa

The first step to becoming is to will it. – Mother Teresa

The first time I received an award, I was very surprised. I did not know whether to accept it or not. But I came to the conclusion that I should accept awards in the name of the poorest poor, as a form of homage to them. I think that basically, when awards are given to me, the existence of the poor in the world is being recognized. – Mother Teresa

The fruit of Prayer is Faith – Mother Teresa

The fruit of Silence is Prayer. – Mother Teresa

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway. – Mother Teresa

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. – Mother Teresa

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow. Do good anyway. – Mother Teresa

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. – Mother Teresa

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. – Mother Teresa

The greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion, which is war against the child. The mother doesn’t learn to love, but kills to solve her own problems. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. – Mother Teresa

The greatest good is what we do for others. – Mother Teresa

The greatest science in the world; in heaven and on earth; is love. – Mother Teresa

The highest form of worship is to find the least among you and treat them like Jesus. – Mother Teresa

The humility of Jesus can be seen in the crib, in the exile to Egypt, in the hidden life, in the inability to make people understand Him, in the desertion of His apostles, in the hatred of His persecutors, in all the terrible suffering and death of His Passion, and now in His permanent state of humility in the tabernacle, where He has reduced Himself to such a small particle of bread that the priest can hold Him with two fingers. The more we empty ourselves, the more room we give God to fill us. – Mother Teresa

The Lord likes small things best, especially those done with love. – Mother Teresa

The mass is the spiritual food that sustains me, without which I could not get through one single day or hour in my life; in the mass we have Jesus in the appearance of bread. While in the slums we see Christ and touch him in the broken bodies, in the abandoned children. – Mother Teresa

The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it. – Mother Teresa

The moment passed — but the darkness is so dark, and the pain is so painful. – But I accept whatever He gives and I give whatever He takes. – Mother Teresa

The more we can give in our silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life. – Mother Teresa

The more we empty ourselves, the more room we give God to fill us. – Mother Teresa

The more you forget yourself, the more Jesus will think of you. – Mother Teresa

The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not mortification, a penance. It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy. – Mother Teresa

The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. – Mother Teresa

The most important medicine is tender love and care. – Mother Teresa

The ocean is made of drops. – Mother Teresa

The other day I dreamed that I was at the gates of heaven. And St. Peter said, ‘Go back to Earth, there are no slums up here.’ – Mother Teresa

The Particular End is to carry Christ into the homes and streets of the slums, among the sick, dying, the beggars and the little street children. The sick will be nursed as far as possible in their poor homes. The little children will have a school in the slums. The beggars will be sought and visited in their holes outside the town or on the streets. She would later elaborate and broaden the text to read, Our particular mission is to labour at the salvation and sanctification of the poorest of the poor, not only in the slums, but also all over the world wherever they may be. – Mother Teresa

The person who gives with a smile is the best giver because God loves a cheerful giver. – Mother Teresa

The point is to do something, however small, and show you care through your actions by giving your time. – Mother Teresa

The poor are great! The poor are wonderful! The poor are very generous! They give us much more than what we give them. – Mother Teresa

The poor are our brothers and sisters … people in the world who need love, who need care, who have to be wanted. – Mother Teresa

The poor give us much more than we give them. They’re such strong people, living day to day with no food. And they never curse, never complain. We don’t have to give them pity or sympathy. We have so much to learn from them. – Mother Teresa

The poorest of the poor are those who feel that they are unloved. – Mother Teresa

The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty—it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God. – Mother Teresa

The poverty of the West is far more difficult to solve than the poverty of India. – Mother Teresa

The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small. – Mother Teresa

The purpose of guilt is to bring us to the Lord, after that it has no purpose. – Mother Teresa

The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or sovereign. – Mother Teresa

The simplest way of becoming his light is by being kind and loving, thoughtful, and sincere with others: ‘By this they will know that you are his disciples.’ – Mother Teresa

The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts–a child–as a competitor, an intrusion and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the dependent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. – Mother Teresa

The success of love is in the loving – it is not in the result of loving. – Mother Teresa

The time we spend in having our daily audience with God is the most precious part of the whole day. – Mother Teresa

The time you spend with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the best time you will spend on earth. Each moment that you spend with Jesus will deepen your union with Him and make your soul everlastingly more glorious and beautiful in Heaven, and will help bring about everlasting peace on earth – Mother Teresa

The trees, the flowers, the plants grow in silence. The stars, the sun, the moon move in silence. Silence gives us a new perspective. – Mother Teresa

The trees, the flowers, the plants grow in silence. The stars, the sun, the moon move in silence. Silence gives us a new perspective. – Mother Teresa

The true way and the sure way to friendship is through humility-being open to each other, accepting each other just as we are, knowing each other. – Mother Teresa

The very fact that God has placed a certain soul in our way is a sign that God wants us to do something for him or her. It is not chance; it has been planned by God. We are bound by conscience to help him or her. – Mother Teresa

The way you help heal the world is you start with your own family. – Mother Teresa

The work we do is only our love for Jesus in action…If we pray the work…if we do it to Jesus, if we do it for Jesus, if we do it with Jesus…that’s what makes us content. – Mother Teresa

The world today is hungry Not only for bread But hungry for love; Hungry to be wanted, Hungry to be loved. – Mother Teresa

Then we have the silence of the eyes which will always help us to see God. Our eyes are like two windows through which Christ or the world comes to our hearts. Often we need great courage to keep them closed. How often we say, I wish I had not seen this thing, and yet we take so little trouble to overcome the desire to see everything. – Mother Teresa

There are many people who can do big things, but there are very few people who will do the small things. – Mother Teresa

There are no great acts, only small acts done with great love – Mother Teresa

There are others who take up that (liberating) role. I have no time to spend for that. – Mother Teresa

There are so many little things we can do for others; people forget about them. But these aren’t small things. – Mother Teresa

There are so many religions and each one has its different ways of following God. I follow Christ:
Jesus is my God,
Jesus is my Spouse,
Jesus is my Life,
Jesus is my only Love,
Jesus is my All in All;
Jesus is my Everything. – Mother Teresa

There is a famine in America. Not a famine of food, but of love, of truth, of life. – Mother Teresa

There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain. Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call and answer in extraordinary ways. – Mother Teresa

There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives – the pain, the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your own family. Find them. Love them. – Mother Teresa

There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives–the pain, the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your own family. Find them. Love them. —Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen, for God speaks in the silence of the heart. Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of your greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don’t only give your care, but give your heart as well. – Mother Teresa

There is a tremendous strength that is growing in the world through sharing together, praying together, suffering together, and working together. – Mother Teresa

There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in – that we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible. – Mother Teresa

There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread. – Mother Teresa

There is much suffering in the world – physical, material, mental. The suffering of some can be blamed on the greed of others. The material and physical suffering is suffering from hunger, from homelessness, from all kinds of diseases. But the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, having no one. I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience. – Mother Teresa

There is no great difference in reality between one country and another, because it is always people you meet everywhere. They may look different or be dressed differently, they may have a different education or position; but they are all the same. They are all people to be loved. – Mother Teresa

There is no key to happiness; the door is always open. – Mother Teresa

There is thing you can do but I can not and there is thing I can but you can not; so let us make something beautiful together – Mother Teresa

There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use. – Mother Teresa

There should be less talk. . . . What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone’s house. That says enough. – Mother Teresa

There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. – Mother Teresa

There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone’s house. That says enough. – Mother Teresa

Therefore, even if you write a letter for a blind man or you must go and sit and listen, or you take the mail for him, or you visit somebody or bring a flower to somebody… it is never too small, for this is our love of Christ in action – Mother Teresa

There’s nothing more calming in difficult moments that knowing there’s some one fighting with you. – Mother Teresa

These are the few ways we can practice humility: To speak as little as possible of one’s self. To mind one’s own business. Not to want to manage other people’s affairs. To avoid curiosity. To accept contradictions and correction cheerfully. To pass over the mistakes of others. To accept insults and injuries. To accept being slighted, forgotten and disliked. To be kind and gentle even under provocation. Never to stand on one’s dignity. To choose always the hardest. – Mother Teresa

These are very unskillful comparisons to represent so precious a thing, but I am not clever enough to think out any more: the real truth is that joy makes the soul so forgetful of itself, and of everything, that it is conscious of nothing, and able to speak of nothing, save of that which proceeds from its joy… Let us join with this soul, my daughters all. Why should we want to be more sensible than she? What can give us greater pleasure than to do as she does? And may all the creatures join with us for ever and ever. Amen, amen, amen. – Mother Teresa

These concerns (for orphan children in India and elsewhere in the world) are very good, but often these same people are not concerned with the millions that are killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. – Mother Teresa

They may see the good you do as self-serving. Continue to do good. They may see your generosity as grandstanding. Continue to be generous. They may see your warm and caring nature as a weakness. Continue to be warm and caring. For, you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It never was between you and them, anyway. – Mother Teresa

They should give until it hurts, maybe a very small thing, maybe just a packet of cigarettes, but instead of by smoking that one packet, maybe I share that packet with somebody who has not got even one cigarette, and that’s the beginning of love, to give until it hurts. – Mother Teresa

They too, are created by the same loving hand of God which Created us…It is our duty to Protect Them and to promote their well-being. – Mother Teresa

They were hungry for the word of God. Here too in the whole world there is a hunger for God, among the young especially. And it is there that we must find Jesus and satisfy that hunger. – Mother Teresa

This is the meaning of true love, to give until it hurts. – Mother Teresa

Though we are involved in social work, our goal is to be contemplatives at the heart of the world. We are with Jesus twenty-four hours a day. We do everything for Jesus. We do it all unto Jesus. – Mother Teresa

Thoughtfulness is the beginning of great sanctity. If you learn this art of being thoughtful, you will become more and more Christ-like, for his heart was meek and he always thought of others. Our vocation, to be beautiful, must be full of thought for others. – Mother Teresa

To Almighty God, it’s not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving. Love is not measured by how much we do; love is measured by how much love we put in; how much it is hurting us in loving. – Mother Teresa

To be able to proclaim the Good News to the poor we must know what is poverty. – Mother Teresa

To be alone with Jesus in adoration and intimate union with Him is the Greatest Gift of Love – the tender love of Our Father in Heaven. – Mother Teresa

To be pure, to remain pure, can only come at a price, the price of knowing God and loving him enough to do his will. He will always give us the strength we need to keep purity as something as beautiful for him. – Mother Teresa

To choose always the hardest. – Mother Teresa

To fear is to expect punishment. To love is to know we are immersed not in darkness, but in light. – Mother Teresa

To give until it hurts. This is the true meaning of love. – Mother Teresa

To God there is nothing small. The moment we have given it to God, it becomes infinite. – Mother Teresa

To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it. – Mother Teresa

To show great love for God and our neighbor we need not do great things. It is how much love we put in the doing that makes our offering something beautiful for God. – Mother Teresa

To students: I pray that all those young people who have graduated, do not carry just a piece of paper with them but that they carry with them love, peace and joy. That they become the sunshine of God’s love to our people, the hope of eternal happiness and the burning flame of love wherever they go. That they become carriers of God’s love. That they be able to give what they have received. For they have received not to keep, but to share. – Mother Teresa

To the good God nothing is little because He is so great and we so small- that is why He stoops down and takes the trouble to make those little things for us- to give us a chance to prove our love for Him. – Mother Teresa

Today it is fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately, it is not fashionable to talk with them. – Mother Teresa

Today somebody is suffering, today somebody is in the street, today somebody is hungry. … We have only today to make Jesus known, loved, served, fed, clothed, sheltered. Do not wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow we will not have them if we do not feed them today. – Mother Teresa

Try to put in the hearts of your children a love for home. Make them long to be with their families. So much sin could be avoided if our people really loved their homes. – Mother Teresa

Unless a life is lived for others, it is not worthwhile. – Mother Teresa

Unless this love is among us, we can kill ourselves with work and it will only be work, not love. Work without love is slavery. – Mother Teresa

Unless we believe and see Jesus in the appearance of bread on the altar, we will not be able to see him in the distressing disguise of the poor. – Mother Teresa

Very less to say, I can make one Catholic or Protestant. – Mother Teresa

Violence of the tongue is very real- sharper than any knife. – Mother Teresa

We all long for heaven where God is, but we have it in our power to be in heaven with him right now-to be happy with him at this very moment. But being happy with him now means. – Mother Teresa

We are all pencils in the hand of God. – Mother Teresa

‎We are already taking care of people from jail. Hundred and ten non-criminal women are already with us in Shantidhan (abode of peace). – Mother Teresa

We are at Jesus’ disposal. If he wants you to be sick in bed, if he wants you to proclaim His work in the street, if he wants you to clean the toilets all day, that’s all right, everything is all right. We must say, I belong to you. You can do whatever you like. And this ..is our strength, and this is the joy of the Lord. – Mother Teresa

We are called to be contemplatives. ..by seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, everywhere, all the time. – Mother Teresa

We are not here to be successful, we are here to be FAITHFUL. – Mother Teresa

We are not social workers. We are contemplatives in the heart of the world. – Mother Teresa

We are taught from the very first moment to discover Christ under the distressing disguixe of the poor, the sick, the outcasts. Christ presents Himself to us under every disguise: the dying, the paralytic, the leper, the invalid, the orphan. – Mother Teresa

We belong to each other. – Mother Teresa

We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love. – Mother Teresa

We can do no great things, only small things with great love. – Mother Teresa

We cannot condemn or judge or pass words that will hurt people. We don’t know in what way God is appearing to that soul and what God is drawing that soul to; therefore, who are we to condemn anybody? – Mother Teresa

We cannot really know God if we do not pray. – Mother Teresa

We cannot separate our lives from the Eucharist; the moment we do, something breaks. People ask, ‘Where do the sisters get the joy and the energy to do what they are doing?’ The Eucharist involves more than just receiving; it also involves satisfying the hunger of Christ. He says, ‘Come to Me.’ He is hungry for souls. – Mother Teresa

We do not strive for spectacular actions. What counts is the gift of yourself, the degree of love you put into each of your deeds. – Mother Teresa

We do our work for Jesus and with Jesus. It’s not a matter of praying some times and working others. We pray the work. – Mother Teresa

We fear the future because we are wasting the today – Mother Teresa

We have a great deal of worth in the eyes of God. I never tire of saying over and over again that God loves us. It is a wonderful thing that God Himself loves me tenderly. That is why we should have courage, joy, and the conviction that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. – Mother Teresa

We have a vow to give wholeheartedly everything to the poor. – Mother Teresa

We have no salaries. When one says he is from a good Catholic family and says he wants to help us, why should we refuse his offer? – Mother Teresa

We have not come into the world to be numbered; we have been created for a purpose; for great things: to love and be loved. – Mother Teresa

We have only today. Let us begin. – Mother Teresa

We have picked up people full of worms from the streets, cared for them and let them die in peace and love. When they are brought to our home, they feel they are in their own homes, with their own families. Now, I am trying to open a house for AIDS victims here (in Delhi). The people are dying because of it. – Mother Teresa

We have to possess before we can give. – Mother Teresa

We have very little, so we have nothing to be preoccupied with. The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have, the more free you are. – Mother Teresa

We learn humility through accepting humiliations cheerfully. – Mother Teresa

We learn humility through accepting humiliations cheerfully. Do not let a chance pass you by. It is so easy to be proud, harsh, moody and selfish, but we have been created for greater things. Why stoop down to things that will spoil the beauty of our hearts? – Mother Teresa

We may not be able to give much but we can always give the joy that springs in a heart that is in LOVE WITH GOD. – Mother Teresa

We must become holy, not because we want to feel holy, but because Christ must be able to live his life fully in us. – Mother Teresa

We must free ourselves to be filled by God. Even God cannot fill what is full. – Mother Teresa

We must have a real living determination to reach holiness. ”I will be a saint” means I will despoil myself of all that is not God; I will strip my heart of all created things; I will live in poverty and detachment; I will renounce my will, my inclinations, my whims and fancies, and make make myself a willing slave to the will of God. – Mother Teresa

We must know that we have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world, not just to go for diplomas and degrees, this work and that work. We have been created in order to love and to be loved. – Mother Teresa

We must love prayer. It widens the heart to the point of making it capable of containing the gift that God makes of himself. Ask and seek, and your heart will be widened to welcome him and to keep him within itself. – Mother Teresa

We must make our homes centers of compassion and forgive endlessly. – Mother Teresa

We must never be afraid to be a sign of contradiction for the world. – Mother Teresa

We must never get into the habit of being preoccupied with the future. There is no reason to do so. God is there. – Mother Teresa

We must not be surprised when we hear of murders, killings, of wars, or of hatred… If a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for us to kill each other? – Mother Teresa

We must not drift away from the humble works, because these are the works nobody will do. It is never too small. We are so small we look at things in a small way. But God, being Almighty, sees everything great. Therefore, even if you write a letter for a blind man or you just go sit and listen, or you take the mail for him, or you visit somebody or bring a flower to somebody-small things-or wash clothes for somebody, or clean the house. Very humble work, that is where you and I must be. For there are many people who can do big things. But there are very few people who will do the small things. – Mother Teresa

We must pray to Jesus to give us that tenderness of the Eucharist. – Mother Teresa

We must remember that life begins at home and we must also remember that the future of humanity passes through the family – Mother Teresa

We must see Christ in the disturbing disguise of the poor. – Mother Teresa

We need prayer to understand God’s love for us. If we really mean to pray and want to pray we must be ready to do it now. These are only the first steps towards prayer but if we never make the first step with determination, we will not reach the last one: the presence of God – Mother Teresa

We need silence to be able to touch souls. – Mother Teresa

We need silence to be alone with God, to speak to him, to listen to him, to ponder his words deep in our hearts. We need to be alone with God in silence to be renewed and transformed. Silence gives us a new outlook on life. In it we are filled with the energy of God himself that makes us do all things with joy. – Mother Teresa

We need to extend to each and every one the assurance that God Loves him. – Mother Teresa

We need to find God and God cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature—trees and flowers and grass—grow in silence. See the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life. – Mother Teresa

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls. – Mother Teresa

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. – Mother Teresa

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noises and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature-trees, flowers, grass-grow in silence. Is not our mission to give God to those we walk with? Not a dead God, but a living, loving God. The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in active life. We need silence to be able to touch souls. The essential thing is not what we say, but what God says to us and through us. Words that don’t give the light of Christ increase the darkness. – Mother Teresa

We need to give Christ a chance to make use of us, to be His word and His work, to share His food and His clothing in the world today. If we do not radiate the light of Christ around us, the sense of the darkness that prevails in the world will increase. – Mother Teresa

We never had any problem from them. Jyoti Basu has been very kind to us. He was the one who told me Mother, please do something for these (jail) girls. He has been helpful and always accessible to us over phone. We also never had any problem whenever we wanted to meet him. – Mother Teresa

We never try to convert those who receive (aid) to Christianity but in our work we bear witness to the love of God’s presence and if Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, or agnostics become for this better men – simply better – we will be satisfied. It matters to the individual what church he belongs to. If that individual thinks and believes that this is the only way to God for her or him, this is the way God comes into their life – his life. If he does not know any other way and if he has no doubt so that he does not need to search then this is his way to salvation. – Mother Teresa

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop were not there, I think the ocean would be less by that missing drop. – Mother Teresa

We pick up people dying full of worms from the street. We have picked up more than 40,000 of them. If I lift up such a person, clean him, love him and serve him, is it conversion? He has been there like an animal in the street but I am giving him love and he dies peacefully. That peace comes from his heart. That’s between him and God. – Mother Teresa

We realize that what we are accomplishing is a drop in the ocean. But if this drop were not in the ocean, it would be missed. – Mother Teresa

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do. – Mother Teresa

We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, with so little, for so long, we are now qualified to do anything, with nothing. – Mother Teresa

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty. – Mother Teresa

We think we do so much for the poor, but it is they who make us rich – Mother Teresa

We too are called to withdraw at certain intervals into deeper silence and aloneness with God, together as a community as well as personally; to be alone with Him — not with our books, thoughts, and memories but completely stripped of everything — to dwell lovingly in His presence, silent, empty, expectant, and motionless. We cannot find God in noise or agitation. – Mother Teresa

We want to create hope for the person … we must give hope, always hope. – Mother Teresa

We will be judged by I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless, and you took me in. – Mother Teresa

We will never know how much just a simple smile will do. – Mother Teresa

We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing. – Mother Teresa

What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone’s house. – Mother Teresa

What we need is love without getting tired. – Mother Teresa

What we need is to love without getting tired. How does a lamp burn? Through the continuous input of small drops of oil. What are these drops of oil in our lamps? They are the small things of daily life: faithfulness, small words of kindness, a thought for others, our way of being silent, of looking, of speaking, and of acting. Do not look for Jesus away from yourselves. He is not out there; He is in you. Keep your lamp burning, and you will recognize Him. – Mother Teresa

What we say does not matter – only what God says to souls through us. – Mother Teresa

What we sometimes consider a stumbling block is rather a rock we can step on. – Mother Teresa

What will we answer to Him about that child, that old father and mother, because they are His creation, they are children of God. – Mother Teresa

What you are doing I cannot do, what I’m doing you cannot do, but together we are doing something beautiful for God, and this is the greatness of God’s love for us-To give us the opportunity to become holy through the works of love that we do because holiness is not the luxury of the few. – Mother Teresa

What you do to these men on California’s Death Row, you do to God. – Mother Teresa

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight; build it anyway. – Mother Teresa

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight. Build anyway. – Mother Teresa

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. – Mother Teresa

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway. – Mother Teresa

Whatever religion we are, we must pray together. – Mother Teresa

Whatever we get from the government or other people – even one rupee we get, we give it to the poor. Completely free service. – Mother Teresa

Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me. – Mother Teresa

When a poor person dies I want then to die in the arms of somebody who loves them. I want them to be able to look for the last time into the eyes of somebody who cares for them – Mother Teresa

When a poor person dies of hunger it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed. – Mother Teresa

When Christ said: I was hungry and you fed me, he didn’t mean only the hunger for bread and for food; he also meant the hunger to be loved. Jesus himself experienced this loneliness. – Mother Teresa

When Christ said: I was hungry and you fed me, he didn’t mean only the hunger for bread and for food; he also meant the hunger to be loved. Jesus himself experienced this loneliness. He came amongst his own and his own received him not, and it hurt him then and it has kept on hurting him. The same hunger, the same loneliness, the same having no one to be accepted by and to be loved and wanted by. Every human being in that case resembles Christ in his loneliness; and that is the hardest part, that’s real hunger. – Mother Teresa

When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread. But a person who is shut out, who feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person who has been thrown out of society – that spiritual poverty is much harder to overcome. And abortion, which often follows from contraception, brings a people to be spiritually poor, and that is the worst poverty and the most difficult to overcome. – Mother Teresa

When I was crossing into Gaza, I was asked at the checkpost whether I was carrying any weapons. I replied: Oh yes, my prayer books. – Mother Teresa

When once a chairman of a multinational company came to see me, to offer me a property in Bombay, he first asked: ‘Mother, how do you manage your budget? I asked him who had sent him here. He replied: ‘I felt an urge inside me.’ I said: other people like you come to see me and say the same. It was clear God sent you, Mr. A, as He sends Mr. X, Mrs. Y, Miss Z, and they provide the material means we need for our work. The grace of God is what moved you. You are my budget. God sees to our needs, as Jesus promised. I accepted the property he gave and named it Asha Dan (Gift of Hope). – Mother Teresa

When we judge others we leave no room to love them. – Mother Teresa

When you don’t have anything, then you have everything – Mother Teresa

When you have nothing left but God,you have more than enough to start over again. – Mother Teresa

When you judge someone you have no time to love them. – Mother Teresa

When you look at the crucifix, you understand how much Jesus loved you. When you look at the Sacred Host you understand how much Jesus loves you now. This is why you should ask your parish priest to have perpetual adoration in your parish. I beg the Blessed Mother to touch the hearts of all parish priests that they may have perpetual Eucharistic adoration in their parishes, and that it may spread throughout the entire world – Mother Teresa

When you look at the Sacred Host you understand how much Jesus loves you now. – Mother Teresa

Where does love begin? In our own homes. When does it begin? When we pray together. The family that prays together stays together.

Where there is love, there is joy. – Mother Teresa

Where was Mother Teresa’s Jesus? He was in the Bible, in the church, in her prayer, in the Eucharist, in her sisters, in the heart of everyone she met, and especially in the poorest of the poor and the lowest of the low. Jesus was in disguise in each one of them. Jesus was behind the foundation of her order. Jesus was behind all that she did. – Mother Teresa

Who is Jesus to me? Jesus is the Word made Flesh. Jesus is the Bread of Life. Jesus is the Victim offered for our sins on the cross. Jesus is the sacrifice offered at holy Mass for the sins of the world and for mine. Jesus is the Word – to be spoken. Jesus is the Truth – to be told. Jesus is the Way – to be walked. Jesus is the Light – to be lit. Jesus is the Life – to be lived. Jesus is the Love – to be loved – Mother Teresa

Without our suffering, our work would simply be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the Redemption. – Mother Teresa

Without out suffering, our work would just be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the Redemption. All the desolation of the poor people, not only their material poverty, but their spiritual destitution, must be redeemed. And we must share it, for only by being one with them can we redeem them by bringing God into their lives and bringing them to God. – Mother Teresa

Without patience, we will learn less in life. We will see less. We will feel less. We will hear less. Ironically, rush and more usually mean less. – Mother Teresa

Words lead to deeds, they prepare the soul, make it ready, and move it to tenderness. – Mother Teresa

Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness. – Mother Teresa

Works of love are always to accept and respect others. – Mother Teresa

Yesterday is gone and tomorrow has not yet come; we must live each day as if it were our last so that when God calls us we already, and prepared, to die with a clean heart. – Mother Teresa

You and I, we are the Church, no? We have to share with our people. Suffering today is because people are hoarding, not giving, not sharing. Jesus made it very clear. Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me. Give a glass of water, you give it to me. Receive a little child, you receive me. Clear. – Mother Teresa

You are greater than you know. – Mother Teresa

You can and you must expect suffering. – Mother Teresa

You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see. – Mother Teresa

You can find Calcutta anywhere in the world. You only need two eyes to see. Everywhere in the world there are people that are not loved, people that are not wanted nor desired, people that no one will help, people that are pushed away or forgotten. And this is the greatest poverty. – Mother Teresa

You can pray while you work. Work doesn’t stop prayer and prayer doesn’t stop work. It requires only that small raising of the mind to him: I love you God, I trust you, I believe in you, I need you now. Small things like that. They are wonderful prayers. – Mother Teresa

You can’t do God’s work without suffering. – Mother Teresa

You have never really lived until you have done something for someone who can never repay you. – Mother Teresa

You have to be holy in your position as you are, and I have to be holy in the position that God has put me. So it is nothing extraordinary to be holy. Holiness is not the luxury of the few. Holiness is a simple duty for you and for me. We have been created for that. – Mother Teresa

You have to do that here in your country. You must come to know the poor. Maybe our people here have material things, everything, but I think that if we all look into our own homes, how difficult we find it sometimes to smile at each other, and that the smile is the beginning of love. – Mother Teresa

You haven’t done the will of God when you have done it miserably. – Mother Teresa

You may be exhausted with work, you may even kill yourself, but unless your work is interwoven with love, it is useless. To work without love is slavery. – Mother Teresa

You must Love with your time, your hands, and your hearts. You need to share all that you have. – Mother Teresa

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God. It was never between you and them anyway. – Mother Teresa

You should never lose heart. God is merciful and kind- he has endowed you with the best gift- smile, which can make millions happy. – Mother Teresa

You weren’t created just to consume resources, you were put on this Earth to make a contribution. – Mother Teresa

You who have received so much love, show your love by protecting the sacredness of life. The sacredness of life is the greatest gifts that God has given us. – Mother Teresa

You will never truly realize God is all you need until He becomes all you have. – Mother Teresa

Your spirit is the duster of any spider web. Behind every finish line, there is a start one. Behind every success, there is another challenge. While you are alive, be alive. If you miss what you once did, do it again. Don’t live in yellow photos… Continue although everyone expects you to give up. Don’t let oxide the iron that is inside you. Do that instead of pity, and they will respect you. When because of years you cannot run, jog. When you cannot jog, walk. When you cannot walk, use a cane. But never stop! – Mother Teresa

Your true character is most accurately measured by how you treat those who can do ‘Nothing’ for you. – Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes

On Abortion

Abortion is murder in the womb…A child is a gift of God. If you do not want him, give him to me. – Mother Teresa

Abortion is profoundly anti-women. – Mother Teresa

Abortion kills twice. It kills the body of the baby and it kills the conscience of the mother. Abortion is profoundly anti-women. Three quarters of its victims are women: Half the babies and all the mothers. – Mother Teresa

America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. – Mother Teresa

And if we can accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? – Mother Teresa

And so let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love, and once we begin to love each other naturally we want to do something. – Mother Teresa

Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use violence to get what they want. – Mother Teresa

Any country that accepts abortion is the poorest of the poor. – Mother Teresa

And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts. – Mother Teresa

But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. – Mother Teresa

By abortion the Mother does not learn to love, but kills her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women to the same trouble. So abortion leads to more abortion. – Mother Teresa

By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. – Mother Teresa

I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. – Mother Teresa

I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is ‘Abortion’, because it is a war against the child… A direct killing of the innocent child, ‘Murder’ by the mother herself… And if we can accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love… And we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. – Mother Teresa

If abortion isn’t wrong, then nothing is wrong. – Mother Teresa

If people spent one hour per week in Eucharistic Adoration, abortion would be ended – Mother Teresa

Let us make that one point – that no child will be unwanted, unloved, uncared for, or killed and thrown away. – Mother Teresa

Once that living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follows very easily. – Mother Teresa

Please don’t kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted, and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child, and be loved by the child. From our children’s home in Calcutta alone, we have saved over 3,000 children from abortions. These children have brought such love and joy to their adopting parents, and have grown up so full of love and joy! – Mother Teresa

The greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion, which is war against the child. The mother doesn’t learn to love, but kills to solve her own problems. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want.

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion. – Mother Teresa

The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts–a child–as a competitor, an intrusion and an inconvenience… – Mother Teresa

The way to plan the family is natural family planning not contraception. In destroying the power of giving life, through contraception, a husband or wife is doing something to self, and so it destroys the gift of life in him or her. – Mother Teresa

The way to plan the family is natural family planning, not contraception…This (use of contraceptives) turns the attention to self and so it destroys the gift of love in him or her. In loving, the husband and wife must turn the attention to each other as happens in natural family planning, and not to self, as happens in contraception. Once that living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follows easily . . . And abortion, which often follows from contraception, brings a people to be spiritually poor, and that is the worst poverty and the most difficult to overcome. – Mother Teresa

There are two victims in every abortion: a dead baby and a dead conscience. – Mother Teresa

We are fighting abortion through adoption. – Mother Teresa

On Charity and Giving

Charity isn’t about pity, it is about love. – Mother Teresa

Give a glass of water, you give it to me. Receive a little child, you receive me. – Mother Teresa

Give love to your children, to a wife or husband, to a next-door neighbour. – Mother Teresa

Give people not only your care, but also your heart. – Mother Teresa

Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt. Give the world your best anyway. – Mother Teresa

Give your hands to serve and your hearts to love. – Mother Teresa

Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness. – Mother Teresa

Give! Give the love you have received to those around you. You must love with your time, your hands, and your hearts. You need to share all that you have. – Mother Teresa

Give, but give until it hurts. – Mother Teresa

I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world. – Mother Teresa

I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I don’t know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will NOT ask, ‘How many good things have you done in your life?’ Rather he will ask, ‘How much LOVE did you put into what you did?’ – Mother Teresa

I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness. – Mother Teresa

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love. – Mother Teresa

I think I’m more difficult than critical. – Mother Teresa

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God. – Mother Teresa

I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor? – Mother Teresa

If only one little unhappy child is made happy with the love of Jesus,…will it not be worth…giving all for that? – Mother Teresa

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. – Mother Teresa

If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it. – Mother Teresa

If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one. – Mother Teresa

If you give what you do not need, it is not giving. – Mother Teresa

Intense love does not measure, it just gives. – Mother Teresa

It is a kingly act to assist the fallen. – Mother Teresa

It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish. – Mother Teresa

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. – Mother Teresa

It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start. – Mother Teresa

It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving. – Mother Teresa

It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters. – Mother Teresa

It often happens that those who spend their time giving light to others, remain in darkness themselves. – Mother Teresa

Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. – Mother Teresa

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love. – Mother Teresa

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go. – Mother Teresa

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work. – Mother Teresa

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty. – Mother Teresa

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. – Mother Teresa

One thing that I ask of you: Never be afraid of giving. There is a deep joy in giving, since what we receive is much more than what we give. – Mother Teresa

Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them. – Mother Teresa

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier. – Mother Teresa

What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more. If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one. – Mother Teresa

You and I, we are the Church, no? We have to share with our people. Suffering today is because people are hoarding, not giving, not sharing. Jesus made it very clear. Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me. Give a glass of water, you give it to me. Receive a little child, you receive me. – Mother Teresa

You must give what will cost you something. This, then, is not just giving what you can live without but what you can’t live without or don’t want to live without, something you really like. Then your gift becomes a sacrifice, which will have value before God. Any sacrifice is useful if it is done out of love. This giving until it hurts – this sacrifice – is what I call love in action. – Mother Teresa

On Faith

Be faithful in the little things. – Mother Teresa

Be faithful to the time spent in prayer and make sure that at least half of your prayer is spent in silence. This will bring you closer to Jesus. If you deepen your prayer life you will grow in holiness and obtain many graces for the souls entrusted to your care. Deepen your love for one another by praying for each other and by sharing thoughts and graces you have received in prayer and reading. – Mother Teresa

Conversion is not only changing the faith. Conversion is changing the heart and working over there is the grace of God. Then only comes the question of change of faith. Nobody can force you, not even the holy prophets. – Mother Teresa

Faith in action is love, and love in action is service. By transforming that faith into living acts of love, we put ourselves in contact with God Himself, with Jesus our Lord. – Mother Teresa

Faith in action is love. And love in action is service. – Mother Teresa

Faith is a gift from God and he gives it to whomever he chooses – Mother Teresa

Faith is a gift of God. Without it there would be no life. And our work, to be fruitful, and to be all for God, and to be beautiful, has to be built of faith. Faith in Christ who has said, I was hungry, I was naked, I was sick, and I was homeless, and you ministered to me! On these words of His all our work is based. – Mother Teresa

Faith is more important to me than life itself because without it there would be no fullness of life. – Mother Teresa

Faith keeps the person who keeps the faith. – Mother Teresa

If faith is lacking, it is because there is too much selfishness, too much concern for personal gain. For faith to be true, it has to be generous and loving. Love and faith go together, they complete each other. – Mother Teresa

The fruit of faith is love. – Mother Teresa

To be faithful in little things is a great thing. – Mother Teresa

We are called upon not to be successful, but to be faithful. – Mother Teresa

We must love one another as God loves each one of us. To be able to love, we need a clean heart. Prayer is what gives us a clean heart. The fruit of prayer is a deepening of faith and the fruit of faith is love. The fruit of love is service, which is compassion in action. – Mother Teresa

On God

God demands not that I be successful, but that I be faithful. – Mother Teresa

God didn’t call me to be successful, He called me to be faithful. – Mother Teresa

God does not create poverty; we do, because we do not share. – Mother Teresa

God does not demand that I be successful. God demands that I be faithful. When facing God, results are not important. Faithfulness is what is important. – Mother Teresa

God does not require that we be successful only that we be faithful. – Mother Teresa

God doesn’t ask that we succeed in everything, but that we are faithful. However beautiful our work may be, let us not become attached to it. Always remain prepared to give it up, without losing your peace. – Mother Teresa

God doesn’t require us to succeed, he only requires that you try. – Mother Teresa

God gives us things to share, God doesn’t give us things to hold. – Mother Teresa

God has created us to love and to be loved, and this is the beginning of prayer-to know that He loves me, that I have been created for greater things. – Mother Teresa

God has identified himself with the hungry, the sick, the naked, the homeless; hunger not only for bread, but for love, for care, to be somebody to someone; nakedness, not for clothing only, but nakedness of that compassion that very few people give to the unknown; homelessness, not only just for a shelter made from stone but for that homelessness that comes from having no one to call your own. – Mother Teresa

God has not created poverty; it is we who have created it. Before God, all of us are poor . – Mother Teresa

God hasn’t called me to be successful. He’s called me to be faithful. – Mother Teresa

God hasn’t called us to be successful, just faithful. – Mother Teresa

God is everywhere and in everything and without Him we cannot exist. – Mother Teresa

God is never late, but rarely early. – Mother Teresa

God Is Using Gianna Jessen To Remind The World, That Each Human Being Is Precious To Him. – Mother Teresa

God loves me. I’m not here just to fill a place, just to be a number. He has chosen me for a purpose. I know it. – Mother Teresa

God loves the world through us. – Mother Teresa

God made the world for the delight of human beings– if we could see His goodness everywhere, His concern for us, His awareness of our needs: the phone call we’ve waited for, the ride we are offered, the letter in the mail, just the little things He does for us throughout the day. As we remember and notice His love for us, we just begin to fall in love with Him because He is so busy with us — you just can’t resist Him. I believe there’s no such thing as luck in life, it’s God’s love, it’s His. – Mother Teresa

God made the world for the delight of human beings. – Mother Teresa

God never sends us more than we can handle. – Mother Teresa

God speaks in the silence of the heart, and we listen. And then we speak to God from the fullness of our heart, and God listens. And this listening and this speaking is what prayer is meant to be. – Mother Teresa

God speaks in the silence of the heart. – Mother Teresa

God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer. – Mother Teresa

God will never, never, never let us down if we have faith and put our trust in Him. He will always look after us. So we must cleave to Jesus. Our whole life must simply be woven into Jesus. – Mother Teresa

I am but a small pencil in the hand of a writing God – Mother Teresa

I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper’s wounds I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience? – Mother Teresa

If our poor die of hunger, it is not because God does not care for them. Rather, it is because neither you nor I are generous enough. It is because we are not instruments of love in the hands of God. We do not recognize Christ when once again He appears to us in the hungry man, in the lonely woman, in the child who is looking for a place to get warm. – Mother Teresa

In the silence of our hearts, God speaks of His love; with our silence, we allow Jesus to love us. – Mother Teresa

In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence. – Mother Teresa

There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God. I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic. – Mother Teresa

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls. – Mother Teresa

When you know how much God is in love with you then you can only live your life radiating that love. – Mother Teresa

Why must we give ourselves fully to God? Because God has given Himself to us. If God who owes nothing to us is ready to impart to us no less than Himself, shall we answer with just a fraction of ourselves? To give ourselves fully to God is a means of receiving God Himself. I for God and God for me. I live for God and give up my own self, and in this way induce God to live for me. Therefore to possess God we must allow Him to possess our soul. – Mother Teresa

You know my God. My God is called love. – Mother Teresa

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God. – Mother Teresa

On Joy

A joyful heart is like the sunshine of God’s love, the hope of eternal happiness. – Mother Teresa

A joyful heart is the normal result of a heart burning with love. She gives most who gives with joy. – Mother Teresa

If you are joyful, do not worry about lukewarmness. Joy will shine in your eyes and in your look, in your conversation and in your countenance. You will not be able to hide it because joy overflows. – Mother Teresa

Joy can multiply itself in a Heart that overflows with Love. – Mother Teresa

Joy is a net of love by which we catch souls. – Mother Teresa

Joy is a sign of generosity. When you are full of joy, you move faster and you want to go about doing good to everyone. – Mother Teresa

Joy is prayer. Joy is strength. Joy is love. Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. God loves a cheerful giver. She gives most who gives with joy. – Mother Teresa

Joy is prayer; joy is strength: joy is love; joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. – Mother Teresa

Joy is strength- Joy is love – Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. She gives most who gives with Joy. – Mother Teresa

Joy is strength. – Mother Teresa

Joy is the characteristic by which God uses us to re-make the distressing into the desired, the discarded into the creative. Joy is prayer-Joy is strength-Joy is love-Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. – Mother Teresa

Joy is the net of love by which we can capture souls. God loves the person who gives with joy. Whoever gives with joy gives more. The best way to show our gratitude to God and to people is to accept with joy. – Mother Teresa

Joy is very infectious; therefore, be always full of joy! – Mother Teresa

Joy must be one of the pivots of our life. It is the token of a generous personality. Sometimes it is also a mantle that clothes a life of sacrifice and self-giving. A person who has this gift often reaches high summits. He or she is like sun in a community. – Mother Teresa

Keep the joy of loving God in your heart and share this joy with all you meet especially your family. – Mother Teresa

Let anyone who comes to you go away feeling better and happier. Everyone should see goodness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile. Joy shows from the eyes. It appears when we speak and walk. It cannot be kept closed inside us. It reacts outside. Joy is very infectious. – Mother Teresa

One filled with joy preaches without preaching. – Mother Teresa

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody. – Mother Teresa

Suffering, if it is accepted together, borne together, is joy. – Mother Teresa

The best way to show my gratitude to God is to accept everything, even my problems, with joy. – Mother Teresa

The joy of Jesus will be my strength – it will be in my heart. Every person I meet will see it in my work; my walk, my prayer – in everything. – Mother Teresa

The Joy of Jesus will be my strength. – Mother Teresa

The joy of the presence of Jesus, you must be able to give wherever you go. But you cannot give what you don’t have. That’s why you need a pure heart, a pure heart that you will receive as a fruit of your prayer, as a fruit of your oneness with Christ. – Mother Teresa

On Life

At the moment of death we will not be judged according to the number of good deeds we have done or by the diplomas we have received in our lifetime. We will be judged according to the love we have put into our work. –  Mother Teresa

Be kind and merciful. Let no one ever come to you without coming away better and happier. –  Mother Teresa

Do not allow yourselves to be disheartened by any failure as long as you have done your best. –  Mother Teresa

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; give the world the best you’ve got anyway. –  Mother Teresa

God has not called me to be successful. He has called me to be faithful. –  Mother Teresa

I am only a pencil in the hand of God, but it is He who writes. – Mother Teresa

I go of my free choice, with the blessing of obedience. – Mother Teresa

If we worry too much about ourselves, we won’t have time for others –  Mother Teresa

If you are discouraged, it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own powers. – Mother Teresa

It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish. – Mother Teresa

It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. – Mother Teresa

Life is a beauty, admire it. – Mother Teresa

Life is a challenge, meet it. – Mother Teresa

Life is a challenge, we must take it. – Mother Teresa

Life Is A Dream – Mother Teresa

Life is a dream, realize it – Mother Teresa

Life is a duty, complete it. – Mother Teresa

Life is a game, play it. – Mother Teresa

Life is a game, play it… Life is too precious, do not destroy it. – Mother Teresa

Life is a promise; fulfill it. – Mother Teresa

Life is a song, sing it. – Mother Teresa

Life is a song, sing it. Life is a struggle, accept it. – Mother Teresa

Life is a sorrow, overcome it. – Mother Teresa

Life is a struggle, accept it. – Mother Teresa

Life is a tragedy, confront it. – Mother Teresa

Life is an adventure, dare it. – Mother Teresa

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. – Mother Teresa

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize it. – Mother Teresa

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize it. Life is a challenge, meet it. Life is a duty, complete it. Life is a game, play it. Life is a promise, fulfill it. Life is sorrow, overcome it. Life is a song, sing it. Life is a struggle, accept it. Life is a tragedy, confront it. Life is an adventure, dare it. Life is luck, make it. Life is too precious, do not destroy it. Life is life, fight for it. – Mother Teresa

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize it. – Mother Teresa

Life is beauty, admire it. – Mother Teresa

Life is bliss, taste it. – Mother Teresa

Life is costly, care for it. – Mother Teresa

Life is Life, fight for it!. – Mother Teresa

Life is love, enjoy it. – Mother Teresa

Life is love, enjoy it. Life is mystery, know it. Life is a promise, fulfill it. – Mother Teresa

Life is luck, make it. – Mother Teresa

Life is mystery, know it. – Mother Teresa

Life is not worth living unless it is lived for others. – Mother Teresa

Life is too precious, do not destroy it. – Mother Teresa

Life is wealth, keep it. – Mother Teresa

Life isn’t about the cherished moments it is also about the hard ones. Just knowing each day that you will arise with the bright shining sun in your eyes. And end with the cool breeze upon your face as you slowly reflect the day that passed by. – Mother Teresa

Life’s a song, sing it – Mother Teresa

Live simply so others may simply live. – Mother Teresa

One of the realities we’re all called to go through is to move from repulsion to compassion and from compassion to wonderment. –  Mother Teresa

Poverty was not created by God. It is we who have caused it, you and I through our egotism. – Mother Teresa

Some people come in our life as blessings. Some come in your life as lessons. – Mother Teresa

Sometimes a good feeling from inside is worth much more than a beautician. – Mother Teresa

Spread the love of God through your life but only use words when necessary. – Mother Teresa

The greatest mistake is to think you are too strong to fall into temptation. Put your finger in the fire and it will burn. So we have to go through the fire. –  Mother Teresa

The less we have, the more we give. Seems absurd, but it’s the logic of love. – Mother Teresa

There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. –  Mother Teresa

There is thing you can do but I can not and there is thing I can but you can not; so let us make something beautiful for God. –  Mother Teresa

We are not called to be successful, but faithful. – Mother Teresa

We cannot give what we have not got. –  Mother Teresa

We fear the future because we are wasting today. – Mother Teresa

We interfere with God’s plans when we push in someone or something else not suitable for us. Be strict with yourself, and then be very strict with what you are receiving from the outside. –  Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes

On Love

A way of satisfying our brethrens’ hunger is to share with them whatever we have – to share with them until we ourselves feel what they feel. –  Mother Teresa

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without being tired. –  Mother Teresa

I don’t do great things. I do small things with great love. –  Mother Teresa

If you want to change the world, go home and love your family. – Mother Teresa

It’s not how much we give but how much love we put into giving. – Mother Teresa

Jesus said love one another. He didn’t say love the whole world. – Mother Teresa

Let us all smile at each other for a smile is the beginning of love. – Mother Teresa

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. –  Mother Teresa

Love – the more you share with others, the more you have. – Mother Teresa

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the action that we do. – Mother Teresa

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action. – Mother Teresa

Love begins at home. – Mother Teresa

Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home. – Mother Teresa

Love cannot remain by itself – it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action and that action is service. – Mother Teresa

Love cannot remain by itself – it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service. Whatever form we are, able or disabled, rich or poor, it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing; a lifelong sharing of love with others. – Mother Teresa

Love cannot remain by itself – it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service. – Mother Teresa

Love for my neighbor will lead me to True Love for God. – Mother Teresa

Love has a hem to her garment that reaches to the very dust. It sweeps the stains from the streets and lanes, and because it can, it must. – Mother Teresa

Love has no meaning if it isn’t shared. We have been created for greater things – to love and to be loved… To love a person without any conditions, without any expectations. Small things, done in great love, bring joy and peace. To love, it is necessary to give. To give, it is necessary to be free from selfishness. – Mother Teresa

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. – Mother Teresa

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it and no limit is set. Everyone can reach this love through meditation, spirit of prayer, and sacrifice, by an intense inner life. – Mother Teresa

Love is not patronizing and charity isn’t about pity, it is about love. Charity and love are the same — with charity you give love, so don’t just give money but reach out your hand instead. – Mother Teresa

Love is not patronizing and charity isn’t about pity, it is about love. Charity and love are the same — with charity you give love, so don’t just give money but reach out your hand instead. – Mother Teresa

Love is proved by deeds; the more they cost us, the greater the proof of our love. – Mother Teresa

Love means to be willing to give until it hurts. – Mother Teresa

love only variously everyday The meaning of love – Mother Teresa

Love should be as natural as living and breathing. – Mother Teresa

Love to be real, it must cost—it must hurt—it must empty us of self. – Mother Teresa

Love until it hurts. Real love is always painful and hurts: then it is real and pure. – Mother Teresa

Our poor people are great people, a very lovable people, They don’t need our pity and sympathy. They need our understanding love and they need our respect. We need to tell the poor that they are somebody to us that they, too, have been created, by the same loving hand of God, to love and be loved. – Mother Teresa

Our vow of chastity is nothing but our undivided love for Christ in chastity, then we proceed to the freedom of poverty-poverty is nothing but freedom. And that total surrender is obedience. If I belong to God, if I belong to Christ, then he must be able to use me. That is obedience. Then we give wholehearted service to the poor. That is service. They complete each other. That is our life. – Mother Teresa

People are unrealistic, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway. – Mother Teresa

People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Love them anyway…. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway…. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. .. Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you’ve got anyway. . – Mother Teresa

Religion has nothing to do with compassion; it is our love for God that is the main thing because we have all been created for the sole purpose to love and be loved. – Mother Teresa

Smile at each other. Smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other- it doesn’t matter who it is- and that will help to grow up in greater love for each other. – Mother Teresa

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever leave you without being happier. – Mother Teresa

Spread your love wherever you go. – Mother Teresa

The fruit of faith is love,and the fruit of love is service…spread love everywhere u go.. –  Mother Teresa

The fruit of love is service, which is compassion in action. –  Mother Teresa

The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty — it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God. – Mother Teresa

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. –  Mother Teresa

The openness of our hearts and minds can be measured by how wide we draw the circle of what we call family. –  Mother Teresa

The work we do is nothing more than a means of transforming our love for Christ into something concrete. I didn’t have to find Jesus. Jesus found me and chose me. A strong vocation is based on being possessed by Christ. He is the Life that I want to live. He is the Light that I want to radiate. He is the Love with which I want to love. He is the Joy that I want to share. He is the Peace that I want to sow. Jesus is everything to me. Without Him, I can do nothing. – Mother Teresa

There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those. –  Mother Teresa

There are only two ways: either we love-and love in action is service – or we put hatred into action and destroy. – Mother Teresa

There is but one love of Jesus, as there is but one person in the poor – Jesus. We take vows of chastity to love Christ with undivided love; to be able to love him with undivided love we take a vow of poverty which frees us from all material possessions, and with that freedom we can love him with undivided love, and from this vow of undivided love we surrender ourselves totally to him in the person who takes his place. – Mother Teresa

There is so much love in us all, but often we are too shy to express our love, and keep it bottled up inside us. We must learn to love, to love until it hurts, and we will know how to accept love. – Mother Teresa

Thou shall love the Lord with thy whole heart, soul, and mind. This is the commandment of the Great God, and he cannot command the impossible. Love is a fruit in season at all times and within reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it and no limit is set. Everyone can reach this love through meditation, spirit of prayer, and sacrifice by an intense inner life. There is no limit because God is love, love is God, God’s love is infinite. But part is to love and to give until it hurts. That’s why it is not how much you do, but how much love you put into the action. – Mother Teresa

To love others as God loves you, that is the measure of success – Mother Teresa

To work without love is slavery. – Mother Teresa

Together we can do great things. –  Mother Teresa

True love is a giving, and giving until it hurts – Mother Teresa

True love is love that causes us pain, that hurts, and yet brings us joy. That is why we must pray to God and ask Him to give us the courage to love. –  Mother Teresa

We complicate prayer as we complicate many things. It is to love Jesus with undivided love-for you, for me, for all of us. And that undivided love is put into action when we do as Jesus said, love as I have loved you. – Mother Teresa

We need to realize that poverty doesn’t only consist of being hungry for bread, but rather it is a tremendous hunger for human dignity. We need to love and to be someone for someone else. –  Mother Teresa

When you love till it hurts, there will be no hurt left, just love. – Mother Teresa

Why can’t there be love that never gets tired? – Mother Teresa

Work without love is slavery. – Mother Teresa

You who have received so much love, share it with others. Love others the way that God has loved you, with tenderness. – Mother Teresa

On Kindness

Be honest and sincere anyway. – Mother Teresa

Be humble and you will never be disturbed. It is very difficult in practice because we all want to see the result of our work. Leave it to Jesus. Be humble like Mary so that you can be holy like Jesus. –  Mother Teresa

Be humble like Mary so that you can be holy like Jesus. –  Mother Teresa

Be kind and merciful. Let no one ever come to you without coming away better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness. – Mother Teresa

Be kind anyway. – Mother Teresa

Be kind to each other. It is better to commit faults with gentleness than to work miracles with unkindness. – Mother Teresa

Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your eyes, kindness in your face, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greetings. We are all but His instruments who do our little bit and pass by. I believe that the way in which an act of kindness is done is as important as the action itself. – Mother Teresa

Humility is the mother of all virtues; purity, charity and obedience. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal. – Mother Teresa

I once picked up a woman from a garbage dump and she was burning with fever; she was in her last days and her only lament was: ‘My son did this to me.’ I begged her: ‘You must forgive your son. In a moment of madness, when he was not himself, he did a thing he regrets. Be a mother to him, forgive him.’ It took me a long time to make her say: ‘I forgive my son.’ Just before she died in my arms, she was able to say that with a real forgiveness. She was not concerned that she was dying. The breaking of the heart was that her son did not want her. This is something you and I can understand. – Mother Teresa

I prefer to make a mistake because I am too kind than to perform miracles without any kindness. – Mother Teresa

I prefer you to make mistakes in kindness than work miracles in unkindness. – Mother Teresa

I would rather make mistakes in kindness and compassion than work miracles in unkindness and hardness. – Mother Teresa

If we are humble, nothing will change us, neither praise, nor discouragement. –  Mother Teresa

If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive. – Mother Teresa

Jesus taught us how to forgive out of love, how to forget out of humility. So let us examine our hearts and see if there is any unforgiven hurt — any unforgotten bitterness! It is easy to love those who are far away. It isn’t always easy to love those who are right next to us. It is easier to offer food to the hungry than to answer the lonely suffering of someone who lacks love right in one. – Mother Teresa

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. – Mother Teresa

Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile. – Mother Teresa

One thing will always secure heaven for us-the acts of charity and kindness with which we have filled our lives. We can do no great things, only small things with great love. – Mother Teresa

People ask me what advice I have for a married couple struggling in their relationship. I always answer: pray and forgive. And to young people from violent homes, I say: pray and forgive. And again, even to the single mother with no family support: pray and forgive. – Mother Teresa

Speak tenderly; let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of your greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don’t only give your care, but give your heart as well. – Mother Teresa

Spread love everywhere you go. – Mother Teresa

Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor…Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting. – Mother Teresa

There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness, and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much. – Mother Teresa

To forgive takes love. To forget takes humility. – Mother Teresa

Whatever our religion, we know that if we really want to love, we must first learn to forgive before anything else. – Mother Teresa

On Peace

A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves. The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, the fruit of service is peace. – Mother Teresa

Every act of love is a work of peace no matter how small. – Mother Teresa

I think that we in our family don’t need bombs and guns, to destroy to bring peace – just get together, love one another, bring that peace, that joy, that strength of presence of each other in the home. And we will be able to overcome all the evil that is in the world. – Mother Teresa

I was once asked why I don’t participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I’ll be there. – Mother Teresa

If we remember that God loves us, and that we can love others as He loves us, then America can become a sign of peace for the world. From here, a sign of care for the weakest of the weak – the unborn child – must go out to the world. If you become a burning light of justice and peace in the world, then really you will be true to what the founders of this country stood for. God bless you! – Mother Teresa

Keep your heart pure. A pure heart is necessary to see God in each other. If you see God in each other, there is love for each other, then there is peace. – Mother Teresa

Let us use love and compassion. Peace begins with a smile. Smile five times a day at someone you don’t really want to smile at all. Do it for peace. – Mother Teresa

Peace and war begin at home. If we truly want peace in the world, let us begin by loving one another in our own families. If we want to spread joy, we need for every family to have joy. – Mother Teresa

Peace and war start within one’s own home. If we really want peace for the world, let us start by loving one another within our families. Sometimes it is hard for us to smile at one another. – Mother Teresa

Peace begins wilt smile. – Mother Teresa

Peace begins with a smile. – Mother Teresa

Peace begins with a smile. I will never understand all the good that a simple smile can accomplish. – Mother Teresa

Please choose the way of peace. In the short term there may be winners and losers in this war that we all dread. But that never can, or never will justify the suffering, pain and loss of life your weapons will cause. – Mother Teresa

The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace. And peace begins with a smile. – Mother Teresa

The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service and the fruit of service is peace. – Mother Teresa

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between. – Mother Teresa

The success of love is in the loving – it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does NOT determine the value of what we have done. – Mother Teresa

The woman is at the heart of the home. Let us pray that we women realize the reason for our existence: to love and be loved and through this love become instruments of peace in the world. – Mother Teresa

There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread. – Mother Teresa

There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use. – Mother Teresa

Today, if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other-that man, that woman, that child is my brother or my sister. If everyone could see the image of God in his neighbor, do you think we would still need tanks and generals? – Mother Teresa

We do not need guns and bombs to bring peace, we need love and compassion. – – Mother Teresa

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls. – Mother Teresa

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. – Mother Teresa

Whenever you share love with others, you’ll notice the peace that comes to you and to them. – Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes

On Prayer

By praying … If you want to pray better, you must pray more. – Mother Teresa

Everything starts with prayer. Love to pray-feel the need to pray often during the day and take the trouble to pray. If you want to pray better, you must pray more. The more you pray, the easier it becomes. Perfect prayer does not consist of many words but in the fervor of the desire which raises the heart to Jesus. – Mother Teresa

I have never found a problem with people from different religions praying together. What I have found is that people are just hungry for God, and be they Christian or Muslim we invite them to pray with us. – Mother Teresa

I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us, and we change things. – Mother Teresa

I used to pray that God would feed the hungry, or do this or that, but now I pray that he will guide me to do whatever I’m supposed to do, what I can do. I used to pray for answers, but now I’m praying for strength. I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things. – Mother Teresa

If you ever feel distressed during your day – call upon our Lady – just say this simple prayer: ‘Mary, Mother of Jesus, please be a mother to me now.’ I must admit – this prayer has never failed me. – Mother Teresa

If you want to pray better, you have to pray more. – Mother Teresa

If you’re too busy to pray…you’re too busy. – Mother Teresa

In reality, there is only one true prayer, only one substantial prayer: Christ himself. There is only one voice which rises above the face of the earth, the voice of Christ. Prayer is oneness with Christ. – Mother Teresa

In vocal prayer we speak to God; in mental prayer he speaks to us. It is then that God pours Himself into us. – Mother Teresa

Joy is prayer; joy is strength, joy is love. God loves a cheerful giver. The best way we can show our gratitude to God and the people is to accept everything with joy. – Mother Teresa

Let’s not pray long, drawn-out prayers, but let’s pray short ones full of love. Let us pray on behalf of those who do not pray. Let us remember, if we want to be able to love, we must be able to pray! – Mother Teresa

My prayer for you is that you come to understand and have the courage to answer Jesus’ call to you with the simple word ‘yes’. – Mother Teresa

My prayer for you is that you may grow in the likeness of Christ, being real carriers of God’s love and that you really bring his presence, first, into your own family, then, to the next door neighbor, the street you we live in, the town we live in, the country we live, then only, in the whole world, that living example of God’s presence. – Mother Teresa

My secret is a very simple one: I pray. To pray to Christ is to love him. – Mother Teresa

My secret is simple — I pray. – Mother Teresa

Perfect prayer does not consist in many words, but in the fervor of the desire which raises the heart to Jesus. – Mother Teresa

Perpetual Adoration, Eucharistic Adoration offers to our people the opportunity to join those in religious life to pray for the salvation of the world, souls everywhere and peace on earth. We cannot underestimate the power of prayer and the difference it will make in our world – Mother Teresa

Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration with exposition needs a great push. People ask me: ‘What will convert America and save the world?’ My answer is prayer. What we need is for every parish to come before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in holy hours of prayer. – Mother Teresa

Pray for me that I not loosen my grip on the hands of Jesus even under the guise of ministering to the poor. – Mother Teresa

Prayer does not demand that we interrupt our work, but that we continue working as if it were a prayer. – Mother Teresa

Prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God’s gift of Himself. – Mother Teresa

Prayer feeds the soul – as blood is to the body, prayer is to the soul – and it brings you closer to God. – Mother Teresa

Prayer gives us a pure heart and a pure heart can do much. – Mother Teresa

Prayer in action is love, and love in action is service. Try to give unconditionally whatever a person needs in the moment. The point is to do something, however small, and show you care through your actions by giving your time … Do not worry about why problems exist in the world – just respond to people’s needs … We feel what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean, but that ocean would be less without that drop. – Mother Teresa

Prayer in action is love, love in action is service. – Mother Teresa

Prayer is as necessary as the air, as the blood in our bodies, as anything to keep us alive-to keep us alive to the grace of God. – Mother Teresa

Prayer is in all things, in all gestures. – Mother Teresa

Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depth of our hearts. – Mother Teresa

Prayer is nothing but that complete surrender, complete oneness with Christ. And this is what makes us contemplative in the heart of the world; for we are twenty-four hours then in His presence: in the hungry, in the naked, in the homeless, in the unwanted, unloved, uncared for. For Jesus said, Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me. – Mother Teresa

Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God. – Mother Teresa

Prayer is the breath of life to our soul; holiness is impossible without it – Mother Teresa

Prayer is the mortar that holds our house together. – Mother Teresa

Prayer makes your heart bigger, until it is capable of containing the gift of God himself. Prayer begets faith, faith begets love, and love begets service on behalf of the poor. – Mother Teresa

Prayer to be fruitful must come from the heart and must be able to touch the heart of God. – Mother Teresa

Purity is the fruit of prayer. – Mother Teresa

Real prayer is union with God, a union as vital as that of the vine to the branch. – Mother Teresa

The family that prays together stays together, and if they stay together they will love one another as God has loved each one of them. And works of love are always works of peace. – Mother Teresa

The first requirement for prayer is silence. People of prayer are people of silence. – Mother Teresa

There are some people who, in order not to pray use as an excuse the fact that life is so hectic that it prevents us from praying. This cannot be. Prayer does not demand that we interrupt our work, but that we continue working as if it were a prayer. It is not necessary to always be in meditation, nor to consciously experience the sensation that we are talking to God, no matter how nice that would be. What matters is being with Him, living in Him, in His will. To love with a pure heart, to love everybody, especially to live the poor, is a twenty-four hour prayer. – Mother Teresa

On Service

A life not lived for others is not a life. – Mother Teresa

At the heart of silence is prayer. At the heart of prayer is faith. At the heart of faith is life. At the heart of life is service. –  Mother Teresa

At this Christmas when Christ comes, will He find a warm heart? Mark the season of Advent by loving and serving the others with God’s own love and concern. – Mother Teresa

Dearest Lord, may I see you today and every day in the person of your sick, and, whilst nursing them, minister unto you. Though you hide yourself behind the unattractive disguise of the irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable, may I still recognize you, and say: Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve you. – Mother Teresa

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person. – Mother Teresa

Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. – Mother Teresa

Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other and in the home begins the disruption of peace in the world.

Get to know the poor in your country. Love them. Serve them. – Mother Teresa

God doesn’t require us to succeed; he only requires that you try. – Mother Teresa

I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples. – Mother Teresa

I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, ‘How many good things have you done in your life?’ rather he will ask, ‘How much love did you put into what you did? – Mother Teresa

I heard the call to give up all and follow Christ into the slums to serve Him among the poorest of the poor. It was an order. – Mother Teresa

I repeat that the poor, the sufferers from leprosy, the rejected, the alcoholics, whom we serve, are beautiful people. Many of them have wonderful personalities. The experience which we have by serving them, we must pass on to people who have not had that wonderful experience. – Mother Teresa

I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and tend to him. I serve because I love Jesus. – Mother Teresa

I think that a person who is attached to riches, who lives with the worry of riches, is actually very poor. If this person puts his money at the service of others, then he is rich, very rich. – Mother Teresa

If there are people who feel that God wants them to change the structures of society, that is something between them and their God. We must serve him in whatever way we are called. I am called to help the individual; to love each poor person. Not to deal with institutions. I am in no position to judge. – Mother Teresa

If we pray, we will believe; If we believe, we will love; If we love, we will serve. – Mother Teresa

If we really want to love, if we really want to live, we must love until it hurts . . . No Rotarian whose motto is Service Above Self, I think, should call himself a Rotarian if he does not make time to serve . . . If we love, we begin to serve – Mother Teresa

If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive. – Mother Teresa

If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. – Mother Teresa

If you judge people, you have no time to love them. – Mother Teresa

In doing your best serving others for free, a lot of eyebrows will raise and sneers will curve many a – faces. But in the end those incredulous to what you put up with to help, no longer matter. It’s not between you and those snobs, but with whom you have given your hand to lift, and of course to God who Is watching and noting it in your book. – Mother Teresa

In each of our lives Jesus comes as the Bread of Life – to be eaten, to be consumed by us. This is how He loves us. Then Jesus comes in our human life as the hungry one, the other, hoping to be fed with the Bread of our life, our hearts by loving, and our hands by serving. In loving and serving, we prove that we have been created in the likeness of God, for God is Love and when we love we are like God. This is what Jesus meant when He said, Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. – Mother Teresa

In loving and serving, we prove that we have been created in the likeness of God, for God is Love and when we love we are like God. – Mother Teresa

In order for us to be able to love, we need to have faith, because faith is love in action and love in action is service. In order for us to be able to love, we have to see and touch. Faith in action through prayer, faith in action through service: each is the same thing, the same love, the same compassion. – Mother Teresa

Let us make one point, that we meet each other with a smile, when it is difficult to smile. Smile at each other, make time for each other in your family. – Mother Teresa

Little things are indeed little, but to be faithful in little things is a great thing. – Mother Teresa

Make us worthy Lord to serve our fellow men throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them through our hands this day their daily bread and by our understanding love, give peace and joy. – Mother Teresa

Mary, my dearest Mother, give me your heart so beautiful, so pure, so immaculate, your heart so full of love and humility, that I may be able to receive Jesus in the Bread of Life, love Him as you loved Him and serve Him in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor. – Mother Teresa

May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in. – Mother Teresa

Never travel faster than your guardian angel can fly. – Mother Teresa

Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you. – Mother Teresa

Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love. – Mother Teresa

Peace begins with a smile… – Mother Teresa

Serve God joyfully. Let there be no sadness in your life: the only true sorrow is sin. – Mother Teresa

The fruit of Love is Service – Mother Teresa

The fruit of Service is Peace – Mother Teresa

The fullness of our heart is expressed in our eyes, in our touch, in what we write, in what we say, in the way we walk, the way we receive, the way we serve. – Mother Teresa

The future is not in our hands. We have no power over it. We can act only today. We have a sentence in our Constitution that says: ‘We will allow the good God to make plans for the future – for yesterday has gone, tomorrow has not yet come and we have only today to make Him known, loved and served.’ So we do not worry about the future. – Mother Teresa

The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved. – Mother Teresa

The simple path: silence is prayer, prayer is faith, faith is love, love is service, the fruit of service is peace. – Mother Teresa

The trouble is that rich people, well-to-do people, very often don’t really know who the poor are; and that is why we can forgive them, for knowledge can only lead to love, and love to service. And so, if they are not touched by them, it’s because they do not know them – Mother Teresa

There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives-the pain the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your own family. Find them. Love them. – Mother Teresa

We all have the duty to serve God where we are called to do so. I feel called to serve individuals, to love each human being. My calling is not to judge the institutions. I am not qualified to condemn anyone. I never think in terms of a crowd, but of individual persons. If I thought in terms of crowds, I would never begin in my work. I believe in the personal touch of one. If others are convinced that God wants them to change social structures, that is a matter for them to take up with God. – Mother Teresa

We all long for heaven where God is, but we have it our power to be in heaven with him right now-to be happy with him at this very moment. But this means being: Loving as he loves, helping as he helps, giving as he gives, serving as he serves, rescuing as he rescues, being with him all 24 hours of the day, touching him in his distressing disguise. – Mother Teresa

We are now in 126 countries. We have 561 houses – tabernacles we call them – and over 4600 nuns. It’s simply to serve the poorest of the poor. We are wanted and we have championed those who have nothing, the deprived children of God. – Mother Teresa

We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something. – Mother Teresa

We serve life, not because it is broken, but because it is holy. – Mother Teresa

We should not serve the poor like they were Jesus. We should serve the poor because they are Jesus. – Mother Teresa

What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family. – Mother Teresa

Without patience, we will learn less in life. We will see less. We will feel less. We will hear less. Ironically, rush and more usually mean less. – Mother Teresa

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin. – Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes

From Wikiquote

  • My own Jesus,
    They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God  – they would go through all that suffering if they had just a little hope of possessing God.
     In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing (Jesus, please forgive my blasphemies, I have been told to write everything). That darkness that surrounds me on all sides. I can’t lift my soul to God – no light or inspiration enters my soul. I speak of love for souls, of tender love for God, words pass through my words [sic, lips], and I long with a deep longing to believe in them! What do I labour for? If there be no God—there can be no soul.—If there is no soul then Jesus—You also are not true… Jesus don’t let my soul be deceived—nor let me deceive anyone. In the call You said that I would have to suffer much.—Ten years—my Jesus, You have done to me according to Your will—and Jesus hear my prayer—if this pleases You—if my pain and suffering—my darkness and separation gives You a drop of consolation—my own Jesus, do with me as You wish—as long as You wish, without a single glance at my feelings and pain… I beg of You only one thing—please do not take the trouble to return soon.—I am ready to wait for You for all eternity.

    • On her dark night of spiritual desolation amidst devotion, in a letter addressed to Jesus, as quoted in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (2007) edited by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, p. 192; regarding this quote, Fr. Kolodiejchuk writes: “…when addressing Jesus — that is, in prayer — she could express herself with ease. Fufilling her confessor’s request, she sent to him a letter addressed to Jesus, enclosing it with her letter dated September 3, 1959.”
  • Often I wonder what does really God get from me in this state — no faith, no love — not even in feelings. The other day I can’t tell you how bad I felt. — There was a moment when I nearly refused to accept. — Deliberately I took the Rosary and very slowly and without even meditating or thinking – I said it slowly and calmly. The moment passed — but the darkness is so dark, and the pain is so painful. – But I accept whatever He gives and I give whatever He takes. People say they are drawn closer to God — seeing my strong faith. – is this not deceiving people? Every time I have wanted to tell the truth – “that I have no faith” – the words just do not come – my mouth remains closed. – And yet I still keep on smiling at God and all.
    • On her dark night of spiritual desolation amidst devotion, in a letter to Bishop Lawrence Trevor Picachy (September 1962), as quoted in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (2009) by Brian Kolodiejchuk, 2009, p. 238 ISBN 0307589234 ISBN 9780307589231
  • The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
    • As quoted by Malcolm Muggeridge in Something Beautiful for God (1971)
  • I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No. I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.
    • In: Malcolm Muggeridge, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, A Gift For God: Prayers and Meditations, New York: Harper & Row, 1975. p. 61; Cited in: M. Dhavamony. “Mother Teresa’s mission of love for the poor” in: Studia missionalia, Vol 39. (1990), p. 137
  • I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper’s wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?
    • Statement of 1977, as quoted in Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (2011) by Susan Ratcliffe, p. 373
  • People are happier. There are more jobs. There are no strikes.
    • Mother Teresa in Emergency Rule period, 1975-77; quoted in: David Aikman (1998), Great souls: six who changed the century, p. 244
  • Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear. The tongue moves but does not speak.
    • Letter to Michael van der Peet (September 1979), quoted in “Mother Teresa Did Not Feel Christ’s Presence for Last Half of Her Life, Letters Reveal”, Fox News (24 August 2007)
  • From now on you must pray for your people and yourself three times a day.
    • Remarks to Mengistu Haile Mariam during the 1984-85 Ethiopian famine, as quoted by Dawit Wolde Giorgis in Red Tears: War, Famine and Revolution in Ethiopia, (The Red Sea Press Inc. 1989), p. 213
  • We are misunderstood, we are misrepresented, we are misreported. We are not nurses, we are not doctors, we are not teachers, we are not social workers. We are religious, we are religious, we are religious.
    • As quoted in Angelo Devananda, Daily Prayers with Mother Teresa (Fount, 1987), p. 91
  • Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it and no limit is set. Everyone can reach this love through meditation, spirit of prayer, and sacrifice, by an intense inner life.
    • As quoted in Love, A Fruit Always In Season : Daily Meditations from the Words of Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1987) edited by Dorothy S. Hunt
  • Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
    • Mary Alice Warner, ‎Dayna Beilenson (1987) Women of faith and spirit: their words & thoughts, p. 42
  • Be kind to each other in your homes. Be kind to those who surround you. I prefer that you make mistakes in kindness rather than that you work miracles in unkindness. Often just for one word, one look, one quick action, and darkness fills the heart of the one we love.
    • Quoted in: Charlotte Gray. Mother Teresa: Her Mission to Serve God by Caring for the Poor. G. Stevens, (1988), p. 53
  • I don’t know what to say since I don’t know what is happening [in Albania]. I can say only one thing. My Albanian people are always in my heart. I pray very much to our Lord that His peace may come to our hearts, in our families and in all the world. I pray for Albania, that the Lord may help its leaders to see clearly because if they want to live in peace, they should love one another.
    • As quoted in Louis Zanga “Mother Teresa’s visit to Albania”, Radio Free Europe Research, (23 August 1989)
  • I’ve never seen the poor people being so familiar with their head of state as they were with her. It was a beautiful lesson for me.
    • On meeting Michèle Duvalier, quoted by Christopher Hitchens in The Missionary Position, (Verso, 1995), page 5
  • I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.
    • As quoted by Christopher Hitchens in The Missionary Position, (Verso, 1995), page 11
  • I do not know anything about Charles Keating’s work or his business or the matters you are dealing with. I only know he has been kind and generous to God’s poor, and always ready to help whenever there was a need… Whenever someone asks me to speak to a judge, I always tell them to pray, to look into [their] heart, and to do what Jesus would do in that circumstance. And this is what I am asking of you, your Honor.
    • Letter to Judge Lance Ito, requesting clemency for Charles Keating (January 18 1992), as quoted by Christopher Hitchens in The Missionary Position, (Verso, 1995), page 67
  • I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic.
    • A Simple Path, compiled by Lucinda Vardey (Ballantine Books, 1995), page 31
  • I am so pleased with all the good work you are doing for world peace and for people in so many countries. May we continue to work together and to share together all for the glory of God and for the good of man.
    • To Sri Chinmoy, as quoted in The Wings of Joy : Finding Your Path to Inner Peace (1997) by Sri Chinmoy
  • Spread love everywhere you go; first of all in your house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor. Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.
    • As quoted in Worldwide Laws of Life : 200 Eternal Spiritual Principles‎ (1998) by John Templeton, p. 448
  • We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if the drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of the missing drop.
    • As quoted in Mother Teresa’s Reaching Out In Love – Stories told by Mother Teresa, Compiled and Edited by Edward Le Joly and Jaya Chaliha, Barnes & Noble, 2002, p. 122
  • I do not agree with a big way of doing things. What matters is the individual. If we wait till we get numbers, then we will be lost in the numbers and we will never be able to show that love and respect for the person.
    • As quoted in Mother Teresa’s Reaching Out In Love – Stories told by Mother Teresa, Compiled and Edited by Edward Le Joly and Jaya Chaliha, Barnes & Noble, 2002, p. 122
  • I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I do know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, He will not ask, “How many good things have you done in your life?,” rather He will ask, “How much love did you put into what you did?
    • Quoted in: Honor Books, ‎W. B. Freeman (2004), God’s Little Devotional Book for Girls, p. 205
  • If I ever become a Saint — I surely be one of “darkness”. I will continually be absent from Heaven — to light the light of those in darkness on earth.
    • As quoted in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (2007) by Brian Kolodiejchuk
  • Don’t look for big things, just do small things with great love….The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love.
    • As quoted in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (2007) by Brian Kolodiejchuk
  • Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love–and now become as the most hated one–the one–You have thrown away as unwanted–unloved. I call, I cling, I want–and there is no One to answer–no One on Whom I can cling–no, No One.–Alone … Where is my Faith–even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness–My God–how painful is this unknown pain–I have no Faith–I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart–& make me suffer untold agony. So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them–because of the blasphemy–If there be God –please forgive me–When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven–there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul.–I am told God loves me–and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?
    • Undated letter indicating that, at least at times, Mother Teresa’s theological doubts were strong enough to be regarded as Christian atheism, reported by Time (9 March 2007) [2], and quoted in “Was Mother Teresa an atheist?”, in The Guardian (24 August 2007)
  • If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
    • Mother Teresa Reflects on Working Toward Peace, (essay, Santa Clara University, retrieved August 2012).

Misattributed

  • People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.
    • This is a variant or paraphrase of The Paradoxical Commandments, by Kent M. Keith, student activist, first composed in 1968 as part of a booklet for student leaders, which had hung on the wall of Mother Teresa’s children’s home in Calcutta, India, and have sometimes become misattributed to her. The version posted at his site begins:

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.

Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
It ends:

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.

Give the world the best you have anyway.

Quotes about Mother Teresa

  • How can a girl like you become a nun? Do you realize that you are burying yourself?
    • Lazar Bojaxhui, as quoted in Marlene T. Elias (1999), A Brief History Of Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, Mother Teresa and Me
  • I could go on and on, filling page after page with dense examples of disasters and crises where Mother Teresa had had no involvement whatsoever. For me, a Calcuttan, born and bred, it does not come as surprise, as I know her order has no infrastructure — indeed it had never been her intention to create an infrastructure for such work, as she had frequently said, ‘I’m not a social worker.’ But what I find somewhat disturbing is that she remained inactive when children were hurt or killed, or were at the risk of being orphaned … this did not sit comfortably with her ‘Child First’ philosophy. But then, for her the unborn child was far more important than the actual child. Having gone through hundreds of her speeches I have wondered, when compared to the unborn child if the actual child mattered to her at all.
    • Aroup Chatterjee (1998), Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict
  • Mother Teresa of Calcutta actually said, in her speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, ‘The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion.’ What? How can a woman with such cock-eyed judgement be taken seriously on any topic, let alone be thought seriously worthy of a Nobel Prize?
    • Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006), Ch. 8: “What’s wrong with religion? Why be so hostile?”
  • She is truly a living saint. She serves as a source of inspiration for me to this day… She is unique in that all her requests for assistance are always approved. No one can say no to Mother Teresa.
    • Dawit Wolde Giorgis, in Red Tears: War, Famine and Revolution in Ethiopia, (The Red Sea Press Inc. 1989), p. 212
  • MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself — and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?
    • Christopher Hitchens, “Mommie Dearest: The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.”, Slate2003-10-20
  • Mother Teresa was a true patriot. A great Albanian. She showed the world how to help the poor and devoted her life to the neediest without interfering in political issues. Just like any religious leader should do…
    I don’t believe in God. I’m a Marxist. I believe in man and in the people. But we liked Mother Teresa. You know, she felt at home here. She came with an open mind and praised our achievements.

    • Nexhmije Hoxha, widow of Enver Hoxha, as quoted in Riccardo Orizio, Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators, (Walker and Company, 2003), pp. 102-103
  • You urge Judge Ito to look into his heart — as he sentences Charles Keating — and do what Jesus would do. I submit the same challenge to you. Ask yourself what Jesus would do if he were given the fruits of a crime; what Jesus would do if he were in possession of money that had been stolen; what Jesus would do if he were being exploited by a thief to ease his conscience? I submit that Jesus would probably and unhesitatingly return the stolen property to its rightful owners. You should do the same. You have been given money by Mr. Keating that he has been convicted of stealing by fraud. Do not permit him the ‘indulgence’ he desires. Do not keep the money. Return it to those who worked for it and earned it!
    • Paul W. Turley, Deputy District Attorney Los Angeles, in response to Mother Teresa’s request for clemency for Charles Keating, as quoted by Christopher Hitchens in The Missionary Position, (Verso, 1995), pp. 70
  • This very successful old and withered person, who doesn’t look in the least like a woman, especially when she raises her clenched fists in prayer, and who, for us, is a very suspect holder of the Nobel Prize … has become for us the symbol of all that is bad in motherhood and womanhood an image, with which we do not wish to be associated. Mother Teresa is the perfect image of a sexless, religious woman. This is, however, not the image of womanhood that we want. Show us instead the mother or daughter who can take delight in the most enjoyable of all worldly pleasures, sexual intimacy. You, you nightmare of women! You unliberated, enslaved wives, mothers, nuns and aunts, what do you want from us, who have finally decided that we are going to take control of our bodies, our children, and our destiny into our own hands? Do you not realize that you are all merely puppets of the devil?
    • Monika Goletzka, “Mother Teresa, The Woman of My Nightmares.” (German: “Mutter Teresa – Frau meiner Alpträume”), in, Sexualpedagogik, the official monthly publication of “Pro Familia,” the West German Planned Parenthood affiliate, March 1986, as quoted by EWTN, citing, The Pro-Life Activist’s Encyclopedia, published by the American Life League, “chapter 67: Planned Parenthood Quotes,”
      George Grant (1954 – ) gives these concluding remarks from Sexualpedagogik“Oh! You poor little nuns who stand at Mother Teresa’s right hand. Let us rid ourselves of these old mothers, aunts, and nuns who appropriate for themselves sorrow and suffering of those still-born babies conceived but not delivered by the beautiful bodies of the white, brown, yellow, and black women who have been physically and morally destroyed by the exploitation of men.” Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood (2000, 4th Revised ed.), Cumberland House, Nashville, Tennessee, ISBN 1581820577 ISBN 9781581820577, ch. 3: “Without a Choice: The Empire Strikes Back,” p. 59. (p. 54, 1998 ed.) [6] Citing note 58, p.371 (2000 ed.):Sexualpedagogik: German Planned Parenthood Federation, November 1985, translated Paul Marx, ALL About Issues, July 1987. [Fr. Paul Benno Marx, OSB (1920-2010), was founder of Human Life International in 1981].

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