Mother Teresa (1910-1997)

Quotes

• Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

• It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.

• It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.

• Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

• Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.

• Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.

• Peace begins with a smile.

• People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People who really want help may attack you if you help them. Help them anyway. Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt. Give the world your best anyway.

• The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.

• There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation than for bread.

• 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.

• We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

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

• Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.

• We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.

• Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.

• The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion, because if a mother can kill her own child what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.

• I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.

• I believe in person to person. Every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is the one person in the world at that moment.

• A joyful heart is like the sunshine of God's love, the hope of eternal happiness.