Pearl Nash
If you’ve ever enjoyed reading Mother Teresa’s quotes, then you’ll LOVE this post.
I’ve personally gone through hundreds of authentic Mother Teresa quotes to pick out her top 50.
And you can filter through the list below to find the topics that most interest you.
But first, a brief introduction about the great woman named Mother Teresa.
Who was Mother Teresa?
Mother Teresa was born in 1910 in Macedonia. Little is known about her early life, but at a young age, she felt a calling to be a nun and serve through helping the poor.
At the age of 18, she was given permission to join a group of nuns in Ireland. After a few months of training, with the Sisters of Loreto, she was then given permission to travel to India.
Mother Teresa went onto to teach in India for 17 years before experiencing a “call within a call” in 1946 to devote herself to caring for the sick and poor.
She established countless centres for blind, aged and disabled people. She was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work in 1979.
Her primary objective in life was to help others. Mother Teresa felt that serving others was a fundamental principle of the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Without further ado, here are Mother Teresa’s 25 most powerful quotes that will make your heart melt.
On judging others
“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”
On smiling
“Peace begins with a smile.”
“Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.”
“Let us make one point, that we meet each other with a smile, when it is difficult to smile. Smile at each other, make time for each other in your family.”
“Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.”
What a fulfilling life entails
“I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I 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?”
“At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done. We will be judged by “I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless, and you took me in.”
Today is all we have
“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”
On love
“Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”
“Love to be real, it must cost—it must hurt—it must empty us of self.”
“People are unrealistic, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway.”
“Love is not patronizing and charity isn’t about pity, it is about love. Charity and love are the same — with charity you give love, so don’t just give money but reach out your hand instead.”
A great principle to live by
“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.”
On what causes emotional suffering
“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty — it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”
“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.”
On peace
“What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.”
On giving
“It’s not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.”
“Live simply so others may simply live.”
On giving it your all
“God doesn’t require us to succeed, he only requires that you try.”
On being humble
“If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are.”
On working with others
“I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.”
On patience
“Without patience, we will learn less in life. We will see less. We will feel less. We will hear less. Ironically, rush and more usually mean less.”
The real success of love
“In the West we have a tendency to be profit-oriented, where everything is measured according to the results and we get caught up in being more and more active to generate results. In the East — especially in India — I find that people are more content to just be, to just sit around under a banyan tree for half a day chatting to each other. We Westerners would probably call that wasting time. But there is value to it. Being with someone, listening wihtout a clock and without anticipation of results, teaches us about love. The success of love is in the loving — it is not in the result of loving.
