Teresa of Ávila Quotes

134 Sourced Quotes

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

Teresa of Ávila
It is here, my daughters, that love is to be found - not hidden away in corners but in the midst of occasions of sin. And believe me, although we may more often fail and commit small lapses, our gain will be incomparably the greater.

Teresa of Ávila
To have courage for whatever comes in life — everything lies in that.

Teresa of Ávila
We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can - namely, surrender our will and fulfill God's will in us.

Teresa of Ávila
O my God, what must a soul be like when it is in this state! It longs to be all one tongue with which to praise the Lord. It utters a thousand pious follies, in a continuous endeavor to please Him who thus possesses it.

Teresa of Ávila
Untilled soil, however fertile it may be, will bear thistles and thorns; and so it is with man's mind.

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

Teresa of Ávila
However, when all is said, truth suffers, but never dies.

Teresa of Ávila
From foolish devotions and sour-faced saints may God deliver us!

Teresa of Ávila
Christ does not force our will, He only takes what we give Him. But He does not give Himself entirely until He sees that we yield ourselves entirely to Him.

Teresa of Ávila
Prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends.

Teresa of Ávila
In a state of grace, the soul is like a well of limpid water, from which flow only streams of clearest crystal. Its works are pleasing both to God and man, rising from the River of Life, beside which it is rooted like a tree.

Teresa of Ávila
This body of ours has one fault: the more you indulge it, the more things it discovers to be essential to it. It is extraordinary how it likes being indulged.

Teresa of Ávila
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.

Teresa of Ávila
There seem to me a great many blessings which come from true poverty and I should be sorry to be deprived of them.

Teresa of Ávila
It is encouraging to see that trials which seemed to us impossible to submit to are possible to others, and that they bear them sweetly. Their flight makes us try to soar, like nestlings taught by the elder birds, who, though they cannot fly far at first, little by little imitate their parents.

Teresa of Ávila
Remember that you have only one soul; that you have only one death to die; that you have only one life.... If you do this, there will be many things about which you care nothing.

Teresa of Ávila
But the fact is, things always seem to come slowly when you are longing for them.

Teresa of Ávila
I have often thought with wonder of the great goodness of God; and my soul has rejoiced in the contemplation of His great magnificence and mercy. May He be blessed for ever! For I see clearly that He has not omitted to reward me, even in this life, for every one of my good desires.

Teresa of Ávila
I say the same of humility and of all the virtues; the wiles of the devil are terrible, he will run a thousand times round hell if by so doing he can make us believe that we have a single virtue which we have not. And he is right, for such ideas are very harmful, and such imaginary virtues, when they come from this source, are never unaccompanied by vainglory; just as those which God gives are free both from this and from pride.

Teresa of Ávila
God gave us faculties for our use; each of them will receive its proper reward. Then do not let us try to charm them to sleep, but permit them to do their work until divinely called to something higher.

Teresa of Ávila
Blessed be He, Who came into the world for no other purpose than to suffer.

Teresa of Ávila
What a miserable life is this! There is no happiness that is secure and nothing that does not change.

Teresa of Ávila
It is a most certain truth, that the richer we see ourselves to be, confessing at the same time our poverty, the greater will be our progress, and the more real our humility.

Teresa of Ávila
Mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us. The important thing is not to think much but to love much and so do that which best stirs you to love. Love is not great delight but desire to please God in everything.

Teresa of Ávila
Every part of the journey is of importance to the whole.

Teresa of Ávila
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.

Teresa of Ávila
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.

Teresa of Ávila
Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's, if we are always criticizing trivial actions - which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives.

Teresa of Ávila
As to what good qualities there may be in our souls, or who dwells within them, or how precious they are — those are things which we seldom consider and so we trouble little about carefully preserving the soul's beauty.

Teresa of Ávila