Mother Teresa Quotes

252 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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
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
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.

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
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
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.

Mother Teresa
People are happier. There are more jobs. There are no strikes.

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

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

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
Our progress in holiness depends on God and ourselves - on God's grace and on our will to be holy.

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

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

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

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
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