There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those.
—Mother Teresa
Topics: Greatness & Great Things, Achieving, Love
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
Topics: Love
Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
—Mother Teresa
Topics: Mentoring, Action, One liners, Helping
I never look at the masses as my responsibility; I look at the individual. I can only love one person at a time – just one, one, one. So you begin. 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 same thing goes for you, the same thing in your family, the same thing in your church, your community. Just begin – one, one, one.
—Mother Teresa
Topics: Responsibility
To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.
—Mother Teresa
Topics: Aid, Assistance, Hope, Perseverance, Resolve, Simple Living, Simplicity, Endurance, Help
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
Topics: Evangelism
Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love.
—Mother Teresa
Topics: Excitement, Love, Heart, Joy
The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
—Mother Teresa
Topics: Love
Life is luck, make it.
—Mother Teresa
The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.
—Mother Teresa
The biggest disease today is not leprosy or cancer or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, deserted by everybody. The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference towards one’s neighbor.
—Mother Teresa
Topics: Purpose, Feelings, Disease, Advice
No matter who says what,
you should accept it with a smile and do your own work.
—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
Topics: Power, God, Action, People
People throughout the world may look different or have a different religion, education, or position, but they are all the same. They are the people to be loved. They are all hungry for love.
—Mother Teresa
Topics: Humanity
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
I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
—Mother Teresa
Topics: Love
Loneliness is the most terrible poverty.
—Mother Teresa
Topics: Loneliness, One liners
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
Topics: Conflict
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
Topics: Faith, Love
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
Topics: Riches, Wealth
Silence gives us a new way of looking at something.
—Mother Teresa
Topics: Silence
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
Topics: Help, Assistance, Aid
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
Topics: Love
If a rose represents love,
and love is everlasting,
then why does a rose wither and die?
—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
Topics: Giving, Wealth
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
Topics: Helping
If love was an ocean, but you were afraid of the water,
would you stand in the sand and look at it waiting
to feel the mists or the waves or would you take the chance,
dive right in and not think about it.
—Mother Teresa
In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.
—Mother Teresa
Topics: Helping, Love, Things, Little Things
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
Topics: Solitude, Silence, Faith
A smile is the beginning of peace.
—Mother Teresa
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Francis de Sales French Catholic Saint
- Wilfred Grenfell Canadian Humanitarian
- Pope John XXIII Italian Catholic Religious Leader
- Jane Addams American Social Reformer
- Nelson Mandela South African Political leader
- Theodore Hesburgh American Catholic Educator
- John Henry Newman British Theologian, Poet
- Vincent de Paul French Catholic Saint
- Thomas Aquinas Italian Catholic Priest
- Henri Nouwen Dutch Catholic Priest
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