Teresa of Ávila Quotes

I was recently told by a great theologian that souls without prayer are like bodies, palsied and lame, having hands and feet they cannot use.

determined to ask those of heaven to heal me — for I wished, nevertheless, to be well, though I bore my illness with great joy. Sometimes, too, I used to think that if I recovered my health, and yet were lost for ever, I was better as I was. But, for all that, I thought I might serve God much better if I were well. This is our delusion; we do not resign ourselves absolutely to the disposition of our Lord, Who knows best what is for our good.

Union is as if in a room there were two large windows through which the light streamed in it enters in diffrent places but it all becomes one.

Once, when she was travelling to one of her convents, St. Teresa of Ávila was knocked off her donkey and fell into the mud, injuring her leg. “Lord,” she said, “you couldn’t have picked a worse time for this to happen. Why would you let this happen?”

And the response in prayer that she heard was, “That is how I treat my friends.”

Teresa answered, “And that is why you have so few of them!

Alma mía, toma la cruz con gran consuelo, que ella sola es el camino para el cielo.

You should each do your duty; and, if this is not appreciated by your superior, you may be sure that it will be appreciated and rewarded by the Lord.

The mind’s continual keeping in the presence of God 8 and the concentration of its thoughts on Him would so enrage the fiend that, although he might try the experiment once, he

It is a most certain truth that the richer we see ourselves to be, confessing at the same time our poverty, the greater will be our progress, and the more real our humility.

do not try to get so much that you achieve nothing.

Lord of ours is so anxious that we should desire Him and strive after His companionship that He calls us ceaselessly, time after time, to approach Him; and this voice of His is so sweet that the poor soul is consumed with grief at being unable to do His bidding immediately; and thus, as I say, it suffers more than

Any unrest and any strife can be borne, as I have already said, if we find peace where we live; but if we would have rest from the thousand trials which afflict us in the world and the Lord is pleased to prepare such rest for us, and yet the cause of the trouble is in ourselves, the result cannot but be very painful, indeed almost unbearable.

Vivo sin vivir en mí... muero porque no muero. (I live without really being alive... I die because I am not dying.)

that 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.

Beg our Lord to grant you perfect love for your neighbour, and leave the rest to Him.

Their heart does not allow them to practise duplicity: if they see their friend straying from the road, or committing any faults, they will speak to her about it; they cannot allow themselves to do anything else.