25 Inspirational Quotations From St. Teresa of Calcutta
In honor of St. Teresa of Calcutta’s canonization here are twenty-five quotations from the foundress of the Missionaries of Charity who exuded joy and selflessness while serving the poor and uncared for.
***What is my thought? I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, This is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and tend to him. I serve because I love Jesus.
***Be kind to each other in your homes. Be kind to those who surround you. I prefer that you make mistakes in kindness rather than that you work miracles in unkindness. Often just for one word, one look, one quick action, and darkness fills the heart of the one we love.
We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.
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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.
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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.
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If you are judging people, you have no time to love them.
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― Upon accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, 1979I choose the poverty of our people. But I am grateful to receive the [Nobel] prize in the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.
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There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in - that we do it to God, to Christ, and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.
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***The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
Let us not use bombs and guns to overcome the world. Let us use love and compassion.
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***I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.
Yesterday is gone and tomorrow has not yet come; we must live each day as if it were our last so that when God calls us we already, and prepared, to die with a clean heart.***
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.
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If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
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If the good you do will be forgotten tomorrow, do it anyway.
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I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I do know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, ‘How many good things have you done in your life?’, rather he will ask, ‘How much love did you put into what you did?’
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If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
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I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.
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***When you know how much God is in love with you then you can only live your life radiating that 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.
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Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
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I do not pray for success. I ask for faithfulness.
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I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.
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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.
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It is not for us to destroy what God has given us. Please, please let your mind and your will become the mind and the will of God. You have the power to bring war into the world or to build peace. Please choose the way of peace.
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