quotes and thoughts from Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa

From 1931 to 1948 Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta,
but the suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls made such
a deep impression on her that in 1948 she received permission from her superiors
to leave the convent school and devote herself to working among the poorest
of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Although she had no funds, she depended
on Divine Providence, and started an open-air school for slum children.
Read more about Mother Teresa here.

thinkers home

Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen, for God speaks in the silence of the heart. 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.

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. He came amongst his own and his own received him not, and it hurt him then and it has kept on hurting him. The same hunger, the same loneliness, the same having no one to be accepted by and to be loved and wanted by. Every human being in that case resembles Christ in his loneliness; and that is the hardest part, that's real hunger.

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving.

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.” This is the commandment of the great God, and he cannot command the impossible. Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it and no limit is set. Everyone can reach this love through meditation, spirit of prayer, and sacrifice, by an intense inner life.

Love cannot remain by itself--it has no meaning.
Love has to be put into action and that action is service.
Whatever form we are, able or disabled, rich or poor,
it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing;
a lifelong sharing of love with others.

There is only one God and He is God to all;
therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God.
I've always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu,
a Muslim become a better Muslim,
a Catholic become a better Catholic.

You and I, we are the Church, no? We have to share with our people. Suffering today
is because people are hoarding, not giving, not sharing. Jesus made it very clear:
Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me. Give a glass
of water, you give it to me. Receive a little child, you receive me. Clear.

The contradictions of her life and faith are nothing compared to my own. And while I wrestle with frustration about the impotence of the individual, she goes right on changing the world. While I wish for more power and resources, she uses her powers and resources to do what she can at the moment.

She upsets me, disturbs me, shames me. What does she have that I do not?

If ever there is truly peace on earth, goodwill to men, it will be because of women like Mother Teresa. Peace is not something you wish for; it's something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away!

Robert Fulghum
All I Really Need to Know
I Learned in Kindergarten

We must make our homes centers of compassion and forgive endlessly.

We can do no great things;
only small things with great love.

There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that
in our lives--the pain, the loneliness. We must have
the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have
right in your own family. Find them. Love them.

The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give.
But the less you have the more free you are. Poverty for us
is a freedom. It is not a mortification, a penance. It is joyful freedom.
There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy.

The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted,
the unloved-- they are Jesus in disguise.

God doesn't require us to succeed; he only requires that you try.

Let us make one point, that we meet each other with a smile,
when it is difficult to smile. Smile at each other,
make time for each other in your family.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop
in the ocean. But if that drop was not in the ocean,
I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
I do not agree with the big way of doing things.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis,
but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love,
for kindness, for thoughtfulness; and this is the great poverty
that makes people suffer 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.

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.

Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.
Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face,
kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be
extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

If we have no peace, it is because we have
forgotten that we belong to each other.

Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious
for greater developments and greater riches and so on,
so that children have very little time for their parents.
Parents have very little time for each other, and
in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world.

If there are people who feel that God wants them to change
the structures of society, that is something between them
and their God. We must serve him in whatever way we are called.
I am called to help the individual; to love each poor person.
Not to deal with institutions. I am in no position to judge.

Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for,
for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

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.

There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well.
They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste.
When I see people throwing away things that we could use.

I never look at the masses as my responsibility.
I look at the individual.
I can love only one person at a time.

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