Mother Teresa Quotes

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

If you want to pray better, you have to pray more.

Nobody can force you, not even the holy prophets.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 Theresa

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.

If I look at the mass I will never act.

I am but a small pencil in the hand of a writing God

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.

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.

We should not serve the poor like they were Jesus. We should serve the poor because they are Jesus.

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.

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?

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.

The openness of our hearts and minds can be measured by how wide we draw the circle of what we call family.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

Success will win you false friends and true enemies - succeed anyway.

In vocal prayer we speak to God; in mental prayer he speaks to us. It is then that God pours Himself into us.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

Holiness consists of doing the will of God with a smile.

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