Teresa Of Avila. Quotes

Be kind to all and severe to thyself.

If God should desire to raise us to the position of one who is an intimate and shares his secrets, we ought to accept this gladly.

Much more is accomplished by a single word of the Our Father said, now and then, from our heart, than by the whole prayer repeated many times in haste and without attention.

From moment to moment one can bear much.

How often I failed in my duty to God, because I was not leaning on the strong pillar of prayer.

I don't know what heavy penance could have come to mind that frequently I would not have gladly undertaken rather than recollect myself in the practice of prayer.

To argue over who is the more noble is nothing more than to dispute whether dirt is better for making bricks or for making mortar.

The tree that is beside the running water is fresher and gives more fruit.

How friendly we should all be with one another if nobody were interested in money and honor.

Love draws forth love.

If this is the way You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few!

Christ moves along the pots and pans.

Let nothing disturb you, / Nothing dismay you; / All things are passing: / God never changes.

Oh, how everything that is suffered with love is healed again!

Hope, O my soul, hope. Watch carefully, for everything passes quickly, even though your impatience turns a very short time into a long one.

Life is to life in such a way that we are not afraid to die.

We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can - namely, surrender our will and fulfill God's will in us.

Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds.

If Christ Jesus dwells in a man as his friend and noble leader, that man can endure all things, for Christ helps and strengthens us and never abandons us. He is a true friend.

Everything seems to me to pass so quickly that we must concentrate on how to die rather than on how to live. How sweet it is to die if one has lived on the Cross with Christ.

To want to become angels while we are still on earth ... is ridiculous.

Humility, however deep it be, neither disquiets nor troubles nor disturbs the soul; it is accompanied by peace, joy and tranquillity.

Life is a night spent in an uncomfortable inn.

True perfection consists in the love of God and our neighbour, and the better we keep both these commandments, the more perfect we shall be.

The life of the spirit is not our life, but the life of God within us.

That is how His Majesty [the Lord] rewards our good works---I mean, by predisposing us to perform better ones.

I am really much more afraid of those people who have so great a fear of the devil, than I am of the devil himself.

What a miserable life is this! There is no happiness that is secure and nothing that does not change.

His Majesty [the Lord] . . . rewards great services with trials, and there can be no better reward, for out of trials springs love for God.

When the soul, through its own fault... becomes rooted in a pool of pitch-black, evil smelling water, it produces nothing but misery and filth.

Patient endurance / Attaineth to all things.

Prayer is a friendly conversation with the One we know loves us.

Dream that the more you struggle, the more you prove the love that you bear your God, and the more you will rejoice one day with your Beloved, in a happiness and rapture that can never end.

There seem to me a great many blessings which come from true poverty and I should be sorry to be deprived of them.

How friendly all men would be one with another, if no regard were paid to honour and money! I believe it would be a remedy for everything.

I fully realize that this gratitude of mine is not in the least a sign of perfection: it must be my nature - I could be suborned with a sardine.

God aids the valiant...both to you and to me He will give the help needed.

It is no small misfortune and disgrace that, through our own fault, we neither understand our nature nor our origin.

God has been very good to me, for I never dwell upon anything wrong which a person has done, so as to remember it afterwards. If I do remember it, I always see some other virtue in that person.

Whoever has not begun the practice of prayer, I beg for the love of the Lord not to go without so great a good. There is nothing here to fear but only something to desire.

What value is there in faith without works? And what are they worth if they are not united to the merits of Jesus Christ, our only good?

Blessed be He, Who came into the world for no other purpose than to suffer.

It is a great folly to be willing to violate the friendship of God, rather than the law of human friendship.

Discontent with this world gives such a painful longing to quit it that, if the heart finds comfort, it is solely from the thought that God wishes it to remain here in banishment.

Souls without prayer are like bodies, palsied and lame, having hands and feet they cannot use.

Nothing is small if God accepts it.

So dearly does His Majesty love us that He will reward our love for our neighbor by increasing the love which we bear to Himself, and that in a thousand ways.

Do you suppose that God has any need of our works? What God needs is the resoluteness of our will.

Jacob did not cease to be a Saint because he had to attend to his flocks.

I had a father and mother, who were devout and feared God. Our Lord also helped me with His grace. All this would have been enough to make me good, if I had not been so wicked.