Quotes from famous phrases, aphorisms, poems and thoughts of Saint Teresa of Avila, exhortations, teachings and reflections on behaviors in the life of faith, prayers to Our Lord.
Phrases of Saint Teresa of Avila
- Nothing disturbs you, nothing frightens you. Everything passes, only God does not change. Patience gets it all. Who has God lacks nothing: only God is enough! Your desire is to see God, your fear, to lose him, your pain, not to possess him, your joy is what can bring you towards him and you will live in great peace.
- The less you have, the more you are free from worries, and the Lord knows that I seem to have greater pain when alms abound than when we lack them.
- Poverty is a good that contains all the goods of the world; it assures us of great dominion, I mean that it makes us masters of all earthly goods, since it makes us despise them.
- Here true humility can intervene, as this virtue and that of self-denial seem to me to always go together: they are two sisters that must never be separated.
- What we can resort to, my daughters, left us by His Majesty, is love and fear. Love will speed up our pace, fear will make us look where we put our feet, so as not to fall along a path along which all of us who live down here meet many stumbling blocks.
- As soon as you communicate, close the eyes of the body and open those of the soul to fix them at the bottom of your heart, where the Lord has descended.
- The castle door is the prayer. To pretend to enter heaven without first entering ourselves in order to better know each other and consider our misery, to see the much we owe to God and the need we have of his mercy, is a true folly.
- Souls without prayer are like a crippled and paralyzed body that has hands and feet, but cannot move them.
- I would like to make it clear that the soul is not thought and that the will is not governed by the imagination. It would be a serious misfortune if it were. It follows, therefore, that the profit of the soul does not consist in much thinking, but in much loving.
- We must find ourselves in ourselves even in the midst of occupations, since there is always a great advantage to remember from time to time, albeit in passing, of the Guest we have in us, persuading ourselves together that in order to speak with him, it is not necessary to raise your voice. If we get used to it, he will make himself feel present.
Recommended readings- Phrases of St. Dominic of Guzman: biography
- Phrases of Santa Gemma Galgani: quotes and aphorisms
- Phrases of Saint Anthony of Padua: quotes, aphorisms
- Phrases of San Filippo Neri: famous aphorisms from the writings
- Phrases of San Camillo de Lellis: quotes and thoughts
- I knew very well that I had a soul, but I did not understand its value, nor who lived it, because the vanities of life had blindfolded me so as not to let me see. If I had understood, as now, that such a great King lived in the small hotel of my soul, it seems to me that I would not have left him so much alone,
but that from time to time I would keep him company, and I would have been more diligent to keep myself spotless.
- A good way to keep yourself in the presence of God is to obtain an image or painting that devotes you to it, not to carry it on your chest without ever looking at it, but to use it and entertain you often with Him; and He will suggest what you have to tell him.
- The vision of our Lord and the continuous conversation I had with him greatly increased my love and my trust: I understood that if he is God, he is also Man, and that as such he not only is not surprised by human weakness, but knows also that this miserable nature of ours is subject to many falls, because of the first sin that He came to repair.
- Although it is God, I can deal with Him as with a friend. It is not He like the lords of the earth who place their greatness in an external apparatus of authority.
- You see in Jesus Christ a father, a brother, a teacher, a spouse and deal with him according to these different qualities and he himself will make you understand which one he likes best and which therefore you must choose. Don't be foolish enough to do without it.
- Our Lord asks and loves courageous souls, however humble. Great things have to be done in the spiritual life.
- The highest perfection does not lie in the inner sweetness, in the great raptures, in the visions and in the spirit of prophecy, but in the perfect conformity of our will with that of God, so as to want us too, and firmly, what we know that He wants, accepting with joy both the sweet and the bitter,
when this is His will.
- Whoever has Christ Jesus as a friend and follows such a magnanimous captain as he can certainly bear everything; Indeed, Jesus helps and strengthens, never fails and sincerely loves. In fact, I have always recognized and still clearly see that we cannot please God and receive great graces from him, if not for the hands of the most sacred Humanity of Christ, in which he said he was pleased.
