We all complain that today’s world stink with self-absorption and selfishness, how about being the change you want to see? We are all healing from one trauma; the best we could do to ourselves is to be kind to each other. We have the best Mother Teresa quotes that will not only inspire this lifestyle but will also shape you into being a better version of yourself.
Before her death, Mother Teresa was a popular missionary and humanitarian. Her lifestyle was an inspiration to many. She dedicated her life to helping and serving those in need. She was compassionate, kind, and selfless.
We celebrate her today because of the generous works she has done and the lives she touched. Aside from that, she also inspired many to live a more selfless life.
Mother Teresa may not be with us again but her quotes live on and we hope they inspire you as well.
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Action plan on how to use your favorite quotes effectively
Don’t just read through the quotes and not apply them. Here are actions plans on how you can take advantage of your favorite quotes effectively as a great reminder and inspiration for your daily empowerment.
- Print it – Print your favorite quote onto paper and stick them up at obvious places around your house, like your bed frame, desk, dressing mirror, refrigerator or microwave.
- Desktop or mobile wallpaper – Type or work out a simple design (use Canva.com to make designing effortless) for your desktop or mobile wallpaper. Change it from time to time for empowering variations.
- Workplace / worktop – Frame your favorite quote up and place them so by your desk. Not only do you get inspired after each read, your colleagues might too.
- Pocket-size cut outs – Compile a list of your favorite quotes in wallet-size fittings. Keep them in your wallet or at the back of your pocket wherever you go. That way, you get to read through them conveniently wherever you go.
- Accelerate further – To this day, I am still constantly learning through paid educational platforms to improve my personal development and professional growth. Even though nowadays, multiple resources can be freely found online, but it’ll take a tremendous amount of effort and time to find what works. I know so and have been joining a premium, life-changing learning program called Mindvalley. It connects me to the world’s best teachers and community and I’ve been on their program since 2019. So yes, I know the programs taught inside work.
162 Mother Teresa Quotes to Inspire Love, Kindness and Compassion
- “We are all pencils in the hand of God.”
- “The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.”
- “Doctors can heal the body, but it is music that uplifts the spirit.”
- “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”
- “Love demands sacrifice. But if we love until it hurts, God will give us His peace and joy. Suffering in itself is nothing; but suffering shared with Christ’s Passion is a wonderful gift.”
- “I embrace suffering even before it actually comes, and like this Jesus and I live in love.”
- “And whatever you did to the least of my brethren, you did it to me.”
- “The way you help heal the world is you start with your own family.”
- “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”
- “Do not worry about why problems exist in the world – just respond to people’s needs.”
- “We cannot give what we have not got.”
- “Prayer is necessary to reach that goal. Because it is the breath of life to our soul, holiness is impossible without it.”
- “You are greater than you know.”
- “There are many people who can do big things, but there are very few people who will do the small things.”
- “I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can love only one person at a time. I can feed only one person at a time. Just one, one, one.”
- “They may see the good you do as self-serving. Continue to do good. They may see your generosity as grandstanding. Continue to be generous. They may see your warm and caring nature as a weakness. Continue to be warm and caring. For, you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It never was between you and them, anyway.”
- “I held the Host with two fingers and thought: How small Jesus made Himself, in order to show us that He doesn’t expect great things of us, but rather little things with great love.”
- “Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you.”
Read more: 120 Best Jim Rohn Quotes That Will Motivate You To Succeed In Life
Best Mother Teresa quotes on love
- “Be faithful in little things, for in them your strength lies.”
- “Do extraordinary things with love.”
- “Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.”
- “God speaks in the silence of the heart.”
- “Mothers are at the heart of the family. Children need their mothers. If the mother is there, the children will be there too. For the family to be whole, the children and the mother also need the father to be present in the home.”
- “Yes, you must live life beautifully and not allow the spirit of the world that makes gods out of power, riches, and pleasure make you forget that you have been created for greater things.”
- “Love begins at home, and every Co-worker, should try to make sure that deep family love abides in his or her home. Only when love abides at home can we share it with our next-door neighbor. Then it will show forth and you will be able to say to them, “Yes, love is here.” And then you will be able to share it with everyone around you.”
- “True love is giving and giving until it hurts.”
- “The poor give us much more than we give them. They’re such strong people, living day to day with no food. And they never curse, never complain. We don’t have to give them pity or sympathy. We have so much to learn from them.”
- “Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the action that we do.”
- “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that he didn’t trust me so much.”
- “We must become holy not because we want to feel holy, but because Christ must be able to live His life fully in us.”
- “God will send” was the reply. Piles of hampers, we were not short. Mother’s faith and trust in God was something living, had become part of herself, one could sense it; yes, one could see Mother had a close Friend, powerful and faithful, working with her all the time.”
- “They were hungry for the word of God. Here too in the whole world there is a hunger for God, among the young especially. And it is there that we must find Jesus and satisfy that hunger.”
- “In loving one another through our works we bring an increase of grace and a growth in divine 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.”
- “The first step to becoming is to will it.”
- “I never get mixed up in what governments should or should not do. Instead of spending time [on] those questions, I say, “Let me do [something] now.”
Read more: 171 Best Lao Tzu Quotes On Leadership, Life, Love & Happiness
Saint Mother Teresa quotes about love
- “In the developed countries there is a poverty of intimacy, a poverty of spirit, of loneliness, of lack of love. There is no greater sickness in the world today than that one.”
- “Loneliness is the most terrible form of poverty.”
- “Be kind and merciful. Let no one ever come to you without coming away better and happier.”
- “God has not called me to be successful. He has called me to be faithful.”
- “There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.”
- “Peace begins with a smile.”
- “St. Augustine wrote at the beginning of his Confessions: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
- “Cheerfulness is a sign of a generous and mortified person who, forgetting all things, even herself, tries to please her God in all she does for souls. Cheerfulness is often a cloak which hides a life of sacrifice and a continual union with God.”
- “Words that do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.”
- “My second resolution is to become an apostle of Joy—to console the Sacred Heart of Jesus through joy.”
- “If you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, just more love”
- “I am perfectly happy to be nobody even to God.”
- “As for myself—there is but one desire—to love God as He has never been loved—with deep personal love.”
- “Pray for me, Your Grace, that there is really “only Jesus” in me.
- 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 mortification, a penance. It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy.”
- “Although she be but little, she is fierce.”
- “We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, with so little, for so long, we are now qualified to do anything, with nothing.”
- “Not handouts, but rather hands held.”
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Famous Mother Teresa quotes prayer
- “With St. Ignatius47 you may add: My only wish and desire, the one thing I humbly crave to have is the grace to love God, to love Him alone. Beyond that I ask for nothing more.”
- “The Lord likes small things best, especially those done with love.”
- “If now we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten how to see God in one another.”
- “The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small.”
- “God alone, God everywhere, God in everybody and in everything, God always.”
- “You will never truly realize God is all you need until He becomes all you have.”
- “I know God will not give me anything I cannot handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.”
- “We must never be afraid to be a sign of contradiction for the world.”
- “I know I am touching the living body of Christ in the broken bodies of the hungry and the suffering.”
- “Life’s a song, sing it.”
- “Suffering by itself has no meaning…But suffering shared with the suffering of Christ has a tremendous meaning. Suffering is really the most beautiful way of growing in holiness to be like Jesus.”
- “Love Jesus—live with Jesus that you may live for Jesus.”
- “One of the realities we’re all called to go through is to move from repulsion to compassion and from compassion to wonderment.”
- “She encouraged others to smile in suffering as she herself did.”
- “Her “smile”—as an expression of her loving disposition toward God—in spite of her feelings.”
- “One filled with the joy preaches without preaching.”
- “Am I ever angry or frustrated? I only feel angry sometimes when I see waste, when things that we waste are what people need, things that would save them from dying. Frustrated? No, never.
- “If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”
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More Mother Teresa quotes love them anyway
- “To work without love is slavery.”
- “With the ability to know and to love; He is a Father who loves each of us uniquely, personally, and He ardently desires our happiness”
- “Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; give the world the best you’ve got anyway.”
- “Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace.”
- “We interfere with God’s plans when we push in someone or something else not suitable for us. Be strict with yourself, and then be very strict with what you are receiving from the outside.”
- “Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor…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, kindness in your warm greeting.”
- “There are things you can do but I can not and there are things I can but you can not; so let us make something beautiful for God.”
- “We need to realize that poverty doesn’t only consist of being hungry for bread, but rather it is a tremendous hunger for human dignity. We need to love and to be someone for someone else.”
- “We cannot give what we have not got.”
- “One of the realities we’re all called to go through is to move from repulsion to compassion and from compassion to wonderment.”
- “Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without being tired.”
- “Ordinary things with extraordinary love.”
- “There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those.”
- “His very being is love; He has created us in his likeness with spiritual powers of intellect and free will,”
- “Do small things with great love.”
- “If we are humble, nothing will change us, neither praise, nor discouragement.”
- “He then said, ‘But in India, where there are so many problems, can you ever be successful at what you do- isn’t it hopeless to try?’ She replied, “Well, Senator, we’re not always called to be successful but we’re always called to be faithful.”
- “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.”
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St Mother Teresa quotes on service
- “Jesus continues to live his passion. He continues to fall, poor and hungry, just like he fell on the way to Calvary. Are we at his side to volunteer to help him? Do we walk next to him with our sacrifice with our piece of bread – real bread – to help him get over his weakness?”
- “The greatest mistake is to think you are too strong to fall into temptation. Put your finger in the fire and it will burn. So we have to go through the fire.”
- “We are not called to be successful, but faithful.”
- “People are hungry for the Word of God that will give peace, that will give unity, that will give joy. But you cannot give what you don’t have. That’s why it is necessary to deepen your life of prayer.”
- “We must never forget that we are bound toward perfection and should aim ceaselessly at it.”
- “Poverty was not created by God. It is we who have caused it, you and I through our egotism.”
- “At the moment of death we will not be judged according to the number of good deeds we have done or by the diplomas we have received in our lifetime. We will be judged according to the love we have put into our work.”
- “I remember my mother. They say she was very holy. One day three of us were [saying] not nice things about the teacher. It was night. [My mother] got up and [turned] off the main switch. She said, “I am a widow. . . . I have no money to spend on electricity for you to talk evil.” And we had to do everything in darkness–go up and down, wash, go to bed.”
- “Together we can do great things.”
- “I go of my free choice, with the blessing of obedience.”
- “God Is Love”
- “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish He didn’t trust me so much.”
- “It was Mother Teresa’s conviction that all people “deep down in their heart, believe in God.
- “We have to possess before we can give.”
- “Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever leave you without being happier.”
- “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”
- “When we come face to face with God, we are going to be judged on how much we loved.”
- “Smiling novices. I can hear the music of your laughter of joy. Learn, my children, to be holy, for true holiness consists of doing God’s work with a smile.”
- “The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”
Read more: 199 Humble Quotes To Stay Modest, Humble And Kind
Mother Teresa quotes on kindness and love
- “The fruit of faith is love, and the fruit of love is service, spread love everywhere u go.”
- “The openness of our hearts and minds can be measured by how wide we draw the circle of what we call family.”
- “Let us all smile at each other for a smile is the beginning of love.”
- “The less we have, the more we give. Seems absurd, but it’s the logic of love.”
- “People are hungry for God. People are hungry for love. Are you aware of that? Do you know that? Do you see that? Do you have eyes to see? Quite often we look but we don’t see. We are all passing through this world. We need to open our eyes and see.”
- “We have a great deal of worth in the eyes of God. I never tire of saying over and over again that God loves us. It is a wonderful thing that God Himself loves me tenderly. That is why we should have courage, joy, and the conviction that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.”
- “If we worry too much about ourselves, we won’t have time for others”
- “How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers”
- “Humility is truth, therefore in all sincerity we must be able to look up and say, “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me.” By yourself you can do nothing, have nothing but sin, weakness and misery. All the gifts of nature and grace you have are from God.”
- “He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your weakness.”
- “Sometimes a good feeling from inside is worth much more than a beautician.”
- “Being unwanted is the biggest disease in the world.”
- “By our life and deeds of love, we are making the Church fully present in the world today.”
- “Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.”
- “I don’t do great things. I do small things with great love.”
- “There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter.”
- “May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in”
- “The fruit of love is service, which is compassion in action.”
- I am only a pencil in the hand of God, but it is He who writes.”
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More Mother Teresa quotes on service to others
- “Be kind to each other. It is better to commit faults with gentleness than to work miracles with unkindness”
- “Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.”
- “It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself.”
- If you are discouraged, it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own powers.”
- “Life is a challenge, we must take it.”
- “I fear just one thing: Money! Greed was what motivated Judas to sell Jesus”
- “Have courage for whatever comes.”
- “If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive.”
- “Peace and war start within one’s own home. If we really want peace for the world, let us start by loving one another within our families. Sometimes it is hard for us to smile at one another.”
- “The moment passed — but the darkness is so dark, and the pain is so painful. – But I accept whatever He gives and I give whatever He takes.”
- “Keep the corners of your mouth turned up. Speak in a low, persuasive tone. Listen; be teachable. Laugh at good stories and learn to tell them. For as long as you are green, you can grow.”
- “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.”
- “In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth, a life full of the most atrocious tortures on earth, will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel.”
- “What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight; build it anyway.”
- “If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.”
- “I want you to be concerned about your next-door neighbor. Do you know your next-door neighbor?”
- “A life not lived for others is not a life.”
- “Some people come in our life as blessings. Some come in your life as lessons.”
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Mother Teresa quotes on life happiness
- “Jesus said love one another. He didn’t say: “love the whole world.”
- “Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing”
- “It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.”
- “Faith is a gift from God and he gives it to whomever he chooses”
- “If you give what you do not need, it is not giving.”
- “Life is a song, sing it. Life is a struggle, accept it.”
- “God gives us things to share, God doesn’t give us things to hold.”
- “If you are joyful, do not worry about lukewarmness. Joy will shine in your eyes and in your look, in your conversation and in your countenance. You will not be able to hide it because joy overflows.”
- “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.”
- “We do not need guns and bombs to bring peace, we need love and compassion.” –
- “I have more often as my companion “darkness.” And when the night becomes very thick- and it seems to me as if I will end up in hell- then I simply offer myself to Jesus.”
- “Profound joy of the heart is like a magnet that indicates the path of life.”
- “Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more.”
- “Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home.”
- “It is a kingly act to assist the fallen.”
- “Intense love does not measure. It just gives.”
Which of these Mother Teresa quotes moved you the most?
Having read this list of Mother Teresa quotes, we hope you are all pumped up to follow her path. She had a big heart and never allowed the selfishness of the world to dissuade her from loving and helping others. Throughout her lifetime, she barely lived for herself.
We hope these quotes you have read above will inspire you to help the poor and the broken no matter how small your impact is. Helping people without focusing on what you stand to gain will open doors of opportunities and blessings. We should also love despite our religious, cultural, behavioral, and nationality differences.
Remember the law of ripple effect? When you treat someone with love, kindness, and compassion, the person passes it on and it keeps going. Sooner or later, the world will change.
Which of these Mother Teresa quotes did you like the most? Did it resonate with you? Let us know in the comment section below.
