Mother Teresa Quotes

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.

I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.

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

Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to
that person, a beautiful thing.

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

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

Like Jesus we belong to the world living not for ourselves but for others. The joy of the Lord is our strength.


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

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. We believe our work should be our example to people.

I think I'm more difficult than critical.

There are so many religions and each one has its different ways of following God. I follow Christ:
Jesus is my God,
Jesus is my Spouse,
Jesus is my Life,
Jesus is my only Love,
Jesus is my All in All;
Jesus is my Everything.

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.

It is impossible to walk rapidly and be unhappy.

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.

Make us worthy, Lord, to serve those people throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them through our hands, this day, their daily bread, and by our understanding love, give them peace and joy.

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

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

I heard the call to give up all and follow Christ into the slums to serve Him among the poorest of the poor. It was an order.
I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them.

Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world.

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.

I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a
love letter to the world.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you
without leaving happier.

If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive.

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.

Keep the joy of loving God in your heart and share this joy with all you meet especially your family. Be holy – let us pray.

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

When once a chairman of a multinational company came to see me, to offer me a property in Bombay, he first asked: ‘Mother, how do you manage your budget?" I asked him who had sent him here. He replied: ‘I felt an urge inside me.’ I said: other people like you come to see me and say the same. It was clear God sent you, Mr. A, as He sends Mr. X, Mrs. Y, Miss Z, and they provide the material means we need for our work. The grace of God is what moved you. You are my budget. God sees to our needs, as Jesus promised. I accepted the property he gave and named it Asha Dan (Gift of Hope).

Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

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.

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.


Mother Teresa - Do It Anyway

People are unreasonable,
illogical, and self-centered,
LOVE THEM ANYWAY

If you do good, people will
accuse you of selfish,
ulterior motives,
DO GOOD ANYWAY

If you are successful, you win
false friends and true enemies,
SUCCEED ANYWAY

The good you do will
be forgotten tomorrow,
DO GOOD ANYWAY

Honesty and frankness
make you vulnerable,
BE HONEST AND FRANK ANYWAY

What you spent years building
may be destroyed overnight,
BUILD ANYWAY

People really need help but
may attack you if you help them,
HELP PEOPLE ANYWAY

Give the world the best you
have and you'll get kicked
in the teeth,
GIVE THE WORLD THE BEST YOU'VE GOT ANYWAY.

From a sign on the wall
of Shishu Bhavan,
the Children's home in Calcutta

Silence Quotes

A quiet mind cureth all.
Robert Burton

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

There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Jalal ad-Din Rumi

It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them…. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.
Thomas Merton

The ideal man is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy.
Aristotle

My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
Edith Sitwell

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.
Mother Teresa

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.
Meister Eckhart

Silence is a source of great strength.
Lao Tzu

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.
Mother Teresa

Of every noble work the silent part is best; of all expression, that which cannot be expressed.
W.W. Story

Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.
Jalal ad-Din Rumi

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.
Mahatma Gandhi

Let's Not Over-Analyse: Over-Analysis Quotes

What we need to know about loving is no great mystery. We all know what constitutes loving behavior; we need but act upon it, not continually question it. Over-analysis often confuses the issue and in the end brings us no closer to insight. We sometimes become too busy classifying, separating, and examining, to remember that love is easy. It's we who make it complicated.
by Leo Buscaglia


A man would do nothing, if he waited until he could do it so well that no one at all would find fault with what he has done.
More Quotes on Procrastination


The problem isn't that you don't have good ideas. The problem is that you want the assurance that they're going to work out. Nobody gets that assurance. You have to be WILLING to TAKE THAT RISK.
O, The Oprah Magazine (Nov 2002)

Being Different Quotes - Be You - Be Yourself Quotes

If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world it will come through the expression of your own personality, that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature.
Bruce Barton 

There is just one life for each of us: our own.
Euripides

When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.
Charles Evans Hughes

From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict which each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.
F.A. Hayek

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
E.E. Cummings

Always show the you in you that makes you the you that you are.
Chidinma Obietikponah

When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.
Charles Evans Hughes

Commandment Number One of any truly civilized society is this: Let people be different.
David Grayson

Why am I upset when I think that I'm different from everybody else, but angry when I realize that I'm the same?
Heather Heine

I didn't belong as a kid, and that always bothered me. If only I'd known that one day my differentness would be an asset, then my early life would have been much easier.
Bette Midler

If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just.
Anita Roddick

Every individual in an organization is motivated by something different.
Rick Pitino

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.
Judy Garland

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
Dr. Seuss

There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.
Samuel Johnson

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey Fierstein

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.
Johann von Goethe

Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?
Fanny Brice

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.
Marianne Moore

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not. Andre Gide

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
Kurt Vonnegut


Share our similarities, celebrate our differences.
M. Scott Peck

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
Cecil Beaton

We boil at different degrees.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you want to stand out, don't be different; be outstanding.
Meredith West

The hardest struggle of all is to be something different from what the average man is.
Charles M. Schwab

All eyes see a different world. All minds live in a different world. Why do we feel the need to force someone to see and live our way? When we do this, we lose sight of our world.
Bobby Lambert

Sophocles Quotes

The ideal condition
Would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct;
But since we are all likely to go astray,
The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach.

Heaven never helps the man who will not act.

There is no happiness where there is no wisdom;
No wisdom but in submission to the gods.
Big words are always punished,
And proud men in old age learn to be wise.

Wisdom outweighs any wealth.

Truly, to tell lies is not honorable;
but when the truth entails tremendous ruin,
To speak dishonorably is pardonable.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

No man loves life like him that's growing old.

Men of ill judgment oft ignore the good
That lies within their hands, till they have lost it.

For God hates utterly
The bray of bragging tongues.

Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong!

Money: There's nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.

Nobody likes the man who brings bad news.

Reason is God's crowning gift to man.

Death is not the worst; rather, in vain
To wish for death, and not to compass it.

Much speech is one thing, well-timed speech is another.

One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.

The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.

What you cannot enforce, do not command.

God & Heaven - Help Quotes

Heaven never helps the man who will not act.
Sophocles