“Do we know our poor people? Do we know the poor in our house, in our family? Perhaps they are not hungry for a piece of bread. Perhaps our children, husband, wife, are not hungry, or naked, or dispossessed, but are you sure there is no one there who feels unwanted, deprived of affection?”
―
Mother Teresa
“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 to grow up in greater love for each other.”
―
Mother Teresa
“Hungry for love, He looks at you. Thirsty for kindness, He begs of you. Naked for loyalty, He hopes in you. Homeless for shelter in your heart, He asks of you. Will you be that one to Him?”
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Mother Teresa
“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.”
―
Mother Teresa
“It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself.”
―
Mother Teresa
“Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.”
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Mother Teresa
“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”
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Mother Teresa
“We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.”
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Mother Teresa
“People are unrealistic, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway.”
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Mother Teresa
“Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.”
―
Mother Teresa
“The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small.”
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Mother Teresa
“Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world.”
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Mother Teresa
“I must be willing to give whatever it takes to do good to others. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts. Otherwise, there is no true love in me, and I bring injustice, not peace, to those around me.”
―
Mother Teresa
“We too are called to withdraw at certain intervals into deeper silence and aloneness with God, together as a community as well as personally; to be alone with Him — not with our books, thoughts, and memories but completely stripped of everything — to dwell lovingly in His presence, silent, empty, expectant, and motionless. We cannot find God in noise or agitation.”
―
Mother Teresa
“Our life of contemplation shall retain the following characteristics:
—missionary: by going out physically or in spirit in search of souls all over the universe.
—contemplative: by gathering the whole universe at the very center of our hearts where the Lord of the universe abides, and allowing the pure water of divine grace to flow plentifully and unceasingly from the source itself, on the whole of his creation.
—universal: by praying and contemplating with all and for all, especially with and for the spiritually poorest of the poor.”
―
Mother Teresa
