Famous Inspiring Quotes by Mother Teresa on Love, Life, Humanity, Kindness, and Charity

A nun and a missionary, Mother Teresa was honoured in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. She dedicated her entire life looking after the poor and was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her work. She was also honoured various other awards including the Bharat Ratna, Order of the Smile, and many more.

From helping out orphanages to educating the destitute and feeding them, she based her whole life on humanitarian work and never missed one chance of doing good or serving other people.

Mother Teresa was also popular for the excellent quotations that she gave out. Some of the best Mother Teresa quotes are listed below.

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

Mother Teresa dedicated her life to love and compassion, and through this quote, she asks us to do the same.

If we keep judging people and continue counting their flaws, then we won't have any time to appreciate them and love them.

Everyone is built differently and in their own unique way. So, instead of judging their bad parts, why not be grateful for their good ones!

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

Being kind and helpful is easy, and so is saying kind and appreciative words. It almost seems like they are so easy to say that they don't hold any value. But that is not the case. The imprint that these short and sweet words tend to leave is proof that kind words hold immense value. A person will always remember if you say something nice to them.

Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.

Everybody cannot indulge in acts of greatness and things that make people remember them because not everyone has the required resources present all the time, and because of other such reasons. But what we can do is carry out small acts of kindness and good spirit with great love. This way, nobody's efforts would go unnoticed.

One does not have to donate to charities and orphanages necessarily, you could simply feed and help out the poor, donate your old clothes and books, and other such small acts that tend to hold great value and power.

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

You don't have to wait for somebody else to start so that you can later follow them. You don't need a leader for you can yourself be that person. Especially if it's about doing something good or kind, never wait for another person to initiate and never hesitate.

What someone else can do, you can do too. So, be the person who leads instead of being the one who waits for the former.

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

Mother Teresa yet again tells the people that one does not need to do a great thing as long as whatever it is you are doing is with great love and spirit, even if it is something small, its value would be the same.

If you do not have the resources or time to help out and feed a hundred people, you could definitely make out time and gather the resources to feed just one.

Besides, it is not about the number, it is about the effort one puts in and the heart they put into it that tends to make the difference.

Peace begins with a smile.

We often tend to underestimate the power a simple smile tends to hold. All you need to do to make someone's day better is pass them a bright smile and voila!

When you smile at someone, it shows warmth and tends to spread love. Smiling is one of the most underrated acts of showing love and affection and spreading peace.

Smile, not just to your loved ones, but to strangers too, and let them know that they are loved too.

So, don't forget to smile today!

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.

One of the most common questions to arise while trying to bring a change or do something is, "But what are one person's efforts going to change?" And the answer to that is, that it is only one person's efforts because of change starts to unravel. One person investing his/her time and energy is more than enough for others to follow.

Change starts from small steps, and from us. We might think that our efforts don't make much of a difference, but they do, and that too a huge difference.

There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than there is for bread.

The world is so full of hatred, bitterness, and violence, that more than food to feed people, we now need love and care to nourish each other and satiate the hunger for feeling wanted and appreciated, than fulfilling the hunger for bread.

We fear the future because we are wasting today.

We tend to worry about tomorrow so much that we forget to live today. By stressing and obsessing about the future, we tend to ruin our present too by letting the worries and inhibitions take over us. But it is simply futile, for the future is not in our control and it never will be. All one can do is think about right now and give their best at that moment.

The sole reason why we get scared of the future is that we are wasting our present, so all one needs to do is give their all today, and you wouldn't have to worry about tomorrow!

Let us continue reading some more inspiring Mother Teresa quotes.

It's not how much we can give but how much love we put into giving.

The quantity or the number of efforts doesn't make much of a difference because its more about how you do something and with how much love you do it. Even something as small as helping someone out holds huge value, all you have to do is make sure you carry an act out of goodwill.

It is the effort, and the thought put behind it that counts the most.

Work without love is slavery.

If you work, make sure you put all your heart, energy, and efforts righteously into it and not just do it for the sake of doing it. If you do something when you don't want to, it becomes an act being carried out forcefully, and if you do something without love, it ends up in the same scenario. Without love and without actually wanting to do something, the work you do is useless and holds no significance; it would just as if someone is making you do it rather than you doing it because you want to.

Some people come in our life as blessings. Some come in your life as lessons.

There are going to be some people who come in your life and make it brighter and help you to see life for what it is. They are going to have a great influence on your overall well-being too. But then there are others who will enter your life solely to teach you lessons, to teach you to be more cautious and to stay on guard. These people will teach you to always be forgiving but never forget, so that you stay careful the next time.

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

Loving and forgiving go hand in hand. One cannot carry out one without another. If you wish to love, you have to learn to be able to forgive and move on because if you don't let go and forgive, you will have to carry the bitterness of that what hurts you and the hatred will not let you love freely. This is why one can never love if he/she cannot forgive.

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.

Discipline acts as the sole bridge between the act of accomplishing something and being able to fulfil it and reach your goal. Discipline comprises of order, self-regulation, control, dedication, hard work, following rules, etc.. Without all these qualities, one would not be able to devour the taste of success, for you need to break blood and sweat before you get to the best parts.

If we are humble, nothing will change us, neither praise, nor discouragement.

If one stays humble through the course of their life, they need to be worried about neither appreciation nor discouragement. This is because when you are respectful and modest, you know your worth and where you stand, and even if someone tells you anything, you tend to take it under consideration and think about it. But if you aren't humble, you let it affect you, which then leads you to act upon it hastily, without even thinking twice.

Do not allow yourselves to be disheartened by any failure as long as you have done your best.

One should always learn from their mistakes and downfalls, rather than letting them discourage you because it is exactly these failures that will help you learn and grow further in life.

One need not worry about failing either if one has given their best performance. Once you have put into something you're all, then regardless of the result, you should be proud of yourself for it is the honest effort that counts more than the end product.

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

The past has already been done, and it is gone; there is nothing you can do about it. The future is yet to come, and there isn't anything you can do about it either. Neither your past nor your future is in your hands, but only your present is.

You can only do something about your today and make sure that you live this moment to the fullest instead of regretting your yesterday or anticipating about tomorrow.

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

Yes, poverty in an economic term and in relation to money, shelter, and food is terrible, but being poor in terms of love and happiness is the worst kind of poverty. You might find a way to come to terms with the former, but the feeling of loneliness and unwanted will eat you up from the inside, which is way worse.

So, let nobody feel alone and spread as much love and kindness as you can because this is what people need more than anything right now; this is what the world needs the most.

God doesn't require us to succeed, he only requires that you try.

The sheer willingness to at least try to do something is more than enough. No matter what the result is, whether you fail or you succeed, the fact that you put your efforts and time into it and that you tried, is way more important than the end product.

Always remember, it is the effort that makes a huge difference and not the result.

I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.

There are always going to be certain things that some people might be able to do while you cannot or some things that you can do, but others can't. But there is no reason as to why one should get disheartened. In fact, this is all the more reason that we join forces and work together because as a community, we stand stronger than ever but alone we stay powerless.

Mother Teresa Quotes on Love and Compassion

1. 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.

2. Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the action that we do.

3. True love is giving and giving until it hurts.

4. Do extraordinary things with love.

5. Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

6. There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.

7. 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.

8. The Lord likes small things best, especially those done with love.

Mother Teresa Quotes on Family

1. The way you help heal the world is you start with your own family.

2. The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small.

3. The openness of our hearts and minds can be measured by how wide we draw the circle of what we call family.

4. If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.

Other Inspirational Mother Teresa quotes:

1. I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?

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

3. If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

4. If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

5. It is a kingly act to assist the fallen.

6. 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.

7. Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

8. It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.

Mother Teresa Quotes on Kindness, Humanity, and Helping Others

1. Be kind and merciful. Let no one ever come to you without coming away better and happier.

2. I prefer you to make mistakes in kindness than work miracles in unkindness.

3. Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace.

4. Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you.

Other Uplifting Mother Teresa Quotes 

1. There are many people who can do big things, but there are very few people who will do the small things.

2. You are greater than you know.

3. Do not worry about why problems exist in the world – just respond to people’s needs.

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

5. I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.

6. Doctors can heal the body, but it is music that uplifts the spirit.

7. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

8. We are all pencils in the hand of God.

9. In loving one another through our works we bring an increase of grace and a growth in divine love.

10. 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.

11. Be faithful in little things, for in them your strength lies.

Mother Teresa Quotes on Service

1. The fruit of faith is love,and the fruit of love is service…spread love everywhere u go..

2. The fruit of love is service, which is compassion in action.

Other Inspiring Mother Teresa Quotes 

1. The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.

2. I go of my free choice, with the blessing of obedience.

3. Together we can do great things.

4. There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter.

5. I don’t do great things. I do small things with great love.

6. Sometimes a good feeling from inside is worth much more than a beautician.

7. If we worry too much about ourselves, we won’t have time for others

8. The less we have, the more we give. Seems absurd, but it’s the logic of love.

9. If you are discouraged, it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own powers.

10. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself.

11. I am only a pencil in the hand of God, but it is He who writes.

12. 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.

13. I fear just one thing: Money! Greed

14. I want you to be concerned about your next-door neighbor. Do you know your next-door neighbor?

15. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

16. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight; build it anyway.

17. How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers.

18. ‎Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.

Mother Teresa Quotes About Life

1. Life’s a song, sing it.

2. 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 to forget that you have been created for greater things.

3. 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.

4. Life is a challenge, we must take it.

5. A life not lived for others is not a life.

6. Some people come in our life as blessings. Some come in your life as lessons.

7. Life is a song, sing it. Life is a struggle, accept it.

8. Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize it.

9. Spread the love of God through your life but only use words when necessary.

10. Profound joy of the heart is like a magnet that indicates the path of life.

11. Please choose the way of peace. In the short term there may be winners and losers in this war that we all dread. But that never can, or never will justify the suffering, pain and loss of life your weapons will cause.

12. I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I don’t 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?’

Mother Teresa Quotes on Smile

1. Peace begins with smile.

2. Let us all smile at each other for a smile is the beginning of love.

3. We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.

4. Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

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

Mother Teresa Quotes Prayer

1. Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depth of our hearts.

2. Joy is prayer; joy is strength: joy is love; joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.

3. Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.

Mother Teresa Quotes about Giving

1. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

2. It’s not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.

More famous Mother Teresa quotes:

1. The first step to becoming is to will it.

2. 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.

3. Although she be but little, she is fierce.

4. There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy.

5. Words that do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.

6. 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.

7. One filled with the joy preaches without preaching.

8. I know I am touching the living body of Christ in the broken bodies of the hungry and the suffering.

9. We must never be afraid to be a sign of contradiction for the world.

10. You will never truly realize God is all you need until He becomes all you have.

Mother Teresa Quotes on Peace

1. Peace begins with smile.

2. If now we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten how to see God in one another.

3. Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace.

4. We do not need guns and bombs to bring peace, we need love and compassion.

5. Please choose the way of peace. In the short term there may be winners and losers in this war that we all dread. But that never can, or never will justify the suffering, pain and loss of life your weapons will cause.

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

7. 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 Quotes on Forgiveness

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

More famous quotes from Mother Teresa:

1. True love is love that causes us pain, that hurts, and yet brings us joy. That is why we must pray to God and ask Him to give us the courage to love.

2. There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those.

3. Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without being tired.

4. To work without love is slavery.

5. God has not called me to be successful. He has called me to be faithful.

6. One of the realities we’re all called to go through is to move from repulsion to compassion and from compassion to wonderment.

7. We cannot give what we have not got.

8. There is thing you can do but I can not and there is thing I can but you can not; so let us make something beautiful for God.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. A way of satisfying our brethrens’ hunger is to share with them whatever we have – to share with them until we ourselves feel what they feel.

12. We are not called to be successful, but faithful.

13. 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.

14. If we are humble, nothing will change us, neither praise, nor discouragement.

15. Do not allow yourselves to be disheartened by any failure as long as you have done your best.

Mother Teresa Quotes on Poverty

1. 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.

2. Loneliness is the most terrible form of poverty.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. Poverty was not created by God. It is we who have caused it, you and I through our egotism.

6. It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.

7. Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them.

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

9. It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.

10. 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.

Mother Teresa Quotes on Charity

1. Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

2. 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.

Other quotes:

1. Good works are links that form a chain of love.

2. Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.

3. I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.

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

5. God doesn’t require us to succeed; he only requires that you try.

6. Live simply so others may simply live.

7. I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.

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

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

Famous Inspirational Mother Teresa Quotes

1. Work without love is slavery.

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

3. Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home.

4. Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more.

5. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are.

6. Do ordinary things with extraordinary love.

7. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use violence to get what they want.

8. Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.

9. When you don’t have anything, then you have everything.

10. Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

11. We fear the future because we are wasting today.

12. One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

13. I have never been in a war before, but I have seen famine and death. I was asking (myself) what do they feel when they do this? I don’t understand it. They are all children of God. Why do they do it? I don’t understand.

14. There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. The success of love is in the loving – it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does NOT determine the value of what we have done.

18. Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.

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

20. Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.

21. I think I’m more difficult than critical.

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

23. I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

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

25. Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.

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

27. 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.

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed some of the top motivating and inspiring Mother Teresa quotes on Life, Humanity, Poverty, Kindness, etc. with their meanings. These quotes will inspire you to do something good for the humanity and help the needy. 

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Co-author:  Khushi Shah 

Khushi has just passed her school and is now studying at PDPU. Apart from writing, she likes to sketch and dance. She also has other blogs where she posts proses and poetry.