Teresa of Avila Quotes

When we accept what happens to us and make the best of it, we are praising God.

I had many friends to help me to fall; but as to rising again, I was so much left to myself, that I wonder now I was not always on the ground. I praise God for His mercy; for it was He only Who stretched out His hand to me. May He be blessed for ever! Amen.

I know the power obedience has of making things easy which seem impossible.

Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they enkindle and melt the soul.

Lord, how Thou dost afflict Thy lovers!

If I should say anything that is not in conformity with what is held by the Holy Roman Catholic Church, it will be through ignorance and not through malice. This may be taken as certain, and also that, through God's goodness, I am, and shall always be, as I always have been, subject to her.

All blessings come to us through our Lord. He will teach us, for in beholding His life we find that He is the best example.

If Christ Jesus dwells in a man as his friend and noble leader, that man can endure all things, for Christ helps and strengthens us and never abandons us. He is a true friend.

Souls who do not practice prayer are like people whose limbs are paralyzed.

Christ moves along the pots and pans.

Out of suffering comes the serious mind; out of salvation, the grateful heart; out of endurance, fortitude; out of deliverance faith. Patient endurance attends to all things.

However much we do to avoid them, we shall never lack crosses in this life if we are in the ranks of the Crucified.

Before prayer, endeavour to realise Whose Presence you are approaching and to Whom you are about to speak, keeping in mind Whom you are addressing. If our lives were a thousand times as long as they are we should never fully understand how we ought to behave towards God, before Whom the very Angels tremble, Who can do all He wills, and with Whom to wish is to accomplish.

For, as I said a little way back, perfect souls are in no way repelled by trials, but rather desire them and pray for them and love them. They are like soldiers: the more wars there are, the better they are pleased, because they hope to emerge from them with the greater riches.

It is only mercenaries who expect to be paid by the day.

It is true that we cannot be free from sin, but at least let our sins not always be the same.

Happy the heart where love has come to birth.

To wish to act like angels while we are still in this world is nothing but folly.

How friendly all men would be one with another, if no regard were paid to honour and money! I believe it would be a remedy for everything.

How is it that we do not die of love in seeing that God Himself could do no more than shed His divine blood for us drop by drop? When as man He was preparing for death, He made Himself our food in order to give us life. God becomes food, bread for his creatures. Is this not enough to make us die of love?

It should be observed that perfect love of God consists not in those delights, tears and sentiments of devotion that we generally seek, but in a strong determination and keen desire to please God in all things, and to promote His glory.

What peace can we hope to find elsewhere if we have none within us

The devil put before me that I could not endure the trials of the religious life, because of my delicate nurture. I defended myself against him by alleging the trials which Christ endured, and that it was not much for me to suffer something for His sake; besides, He would help me to bear it.

True love grows by sacrifice and the more thoroughly the soul rejects natural satisfaction the stronger and more detached its tenderness becomes.

Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. Everything passes away except God. God alone is sufficient.

Pain is never permanent.

The custom of speaking to God Almighty as freely as with a slave - caring nothing whether the words are suitable or not, but simply saying the first thing that comes to mind from being learnt by rote by frequent repetition - cannot be called prayer: God grant that no Christian may address Him in this manner.

As God's beloved, I live in the bliss knowing that my soul is never separated from Him, for I learn to know Her in all that I see. God dissolved my mind-my separation. I cannot describe now my intimacy with Him.

I once heard a spiritual man say that he was not so much astonished at the things done by a soul in mortal sin as at the things not done by it. May God, in his mercy, deliver us from such great evil, for there is nothing in the whole of our lives that so thoroughly deserves to be called evil as this, since it brings endless and eternal evils in its train.

If I were to give advice, I would say to parents that they ought to be very careful whom they allow to mix with their children when young; for much mischief thence ensues, and our natural inclinations are unto evil rather than unto good.

The best thing must be to flee from all to the All.

True perfection consists in the love of God and our neighbour, and the better we keep both these commandments, the more perfect we shall be.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

What value is there in faith without works? And what are they worth if they are not united to the merits of Jesus Christ, our only good?

Those seeking the life of the spirit should be cheerful and free, and not neglect recreation. Married people must act in conformity with their vocation--but their progress will of necessity be but the pace of a hen.

Everything seems to me to pass so quickly that we must concentrate on how to die rather than on how to live. How sweet it is to die if one has lived on the Cross with Christ.

You ought to make every effort to free yourselves even from venial sin, and to do what is most perfect.

In order to profit from this path [of prayer] and ascend to the dwelling places we desire, the important thing is not to think much but to love much; and so, do that which best stirs you to love.

For pity's sake, don't start meeting troubles halfway.

Half-instructed confessors have done my soul great harm; for I could not always have such learned ones as I would have desired. They certainly did not wish to deceive me, but the fact was that they knew no better. Of something which was a venial sin, they said it was no sin, and out of a very grave mortal sin they made a venial sin. This has done me such harm, that my speaking here of so great an evil, as a warning to others, will be readily understood.

No one should think or say anything of another which he would not wish thought or said of himself.

It is no small misfortune and disgrace that, through our own fault, we neither understand our nature nor our origin.

From heaven even the most miserable life will look like one bad night at an inconvenient hotel.

It is not so essential to think much as to love much.

Patient endurance / Attaineth to all things.

From moment to moment one can bear much.

Those who give themselves to prayer should in a special manner have always a devotion to St. Joseph; for I know not how any man can think of the Queen of the angels, during the time that she suffered so much with the Infant Jesus, without giving thanks to St. Joseph for the services he rendered them then.

Let us consider the glorious Saint Paul: it seems that no other name fell from his lips than that of Jesus, because the name of Jesus was fixed and embedded in his heart.