Quotes by Mother Teresa
Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Mother Teresa. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Mother Teresa
Mother Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu (born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, Albanian: [aˈɲɛzə ˈɡɔndʒɛ bɔjaˈdʒiu]; 26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), honoured in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary. She was born in Skopje (now the capital of North Macedonia), then part of the Kosovo Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. After living in Skopje for eighteen years, she moved to Ireland and then to India, where she lived for most of her life.
In 1950, Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation that had over 4,500 nuns and was active in 133 countries in 2012. The congregation manages homes for people who are dying of HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis. It also runs soup kitchens, dispensaries, mobile clinics, children's and family counselling programmes, as well as orphanages and schools. Members take vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and also profess a fourth vow – to give "wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor."Teresa received a number of honors, including the 1962 Ramon Magsaysay Peace Prize and the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. She was canonised on 4 September 2016, and the anniversary of her death (5 September) is her feast day. A controversial figure during her life and after her death, Teresa was admired by many for her charitable work. She was praised and criticized on various counts, such as for her views on abortion and contraception, and was criticized for poor conditions in her houses for the dying. Her authorized biography was written by Navin Chawla and published in 1992, and she has been the subject of films and other books. On 6 September 2017, Teresa and St. Francis Xavier were named co-patrons of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Calcutta.
Don't expect your friend to be a perfect person. Help your friend to become a perfect person. That is true friendship.
The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
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.
The right to life does not depend, and must not be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or sovereign.
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.
Love cannot remain by itself it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action and that action is service.
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.
Jesus gives me the opportunity to feed Him by feeding those who are hungry, to clothe Him by clothing those who are naked, to heal Him by caring for those who are sick, and to offer Him shelter by housing those who are homeless and unwanted.
Do you want to do something beautiful for God? There is a person who needs you. This is your chance.
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.
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.'
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Each of us is merely a small instrument; all of us, after accomplishing our mission, will disappear.
People are hungry for God. What a terrible meeting it would be with our neighbour if we give them only ourselves.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Be kind to each other. It is better to commit faults with gentleness than to work miracles with unkindness.
Do not worry about your career. Concern yourself with your vocation, and that is to be lovers of Jesus.
If you are looking for vocations, as a community have adoration every day. Once the Missionaries of Charity started daily adoration, their vocations doubled.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Perfect prayer does not consist in many words, but in the fervor of the desire which raises the heart to Jesus.
When you know how much God is in love with you then you can only live your life radiating that love.
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.
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.
I know i am touching the living body of Christ in the broken bodies of the hungry and the suffering.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Let us be very sincere in our dealings with each other and have the courage to accept each other as we are.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In the silence of our hearts, God speaks of His love; with our silence, we allow Jesus to love us.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
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.
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.
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.
Holy Angels, our advocates, our brothers, our counselors, our defenders, our enlighteners, our friends, our guides, our helpers, our intercessors -- Pray for us.
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.
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.
Let us not use bombs and guns to overcome the world. Let us use love and compassion. Peace begins with a smile.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The poor are our brothers and sisters ... people in the world who need love, who need care, who have to be wanted.
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.
Prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God's gift of Himself.
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.
It is not what we do but how much love we put into it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us, and we change things.
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.
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.
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.
Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use violence to get what they want.
We must remember that life begins at home and we must also remember that the future of humanity passes through the family.
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.
Whatever we get from the government or other people -- even one rupee we get, we give it to the poor. Completely free service.
Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
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.
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.
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.
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.
The point is to do something, however small, and show you care through your actions by giving your time.
