Mother Teresa - In her own words

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

Mother Teresa taught us by her sample what it really means to 'live' the Gospel.

On Serving God
"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies."

"Each one of them is Jesus in disguise."

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

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

"I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much."

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

"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 - frows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls."

"Jesus is my God. Jesus is my Husband. Jesus is my Life. Jesus is my only Love. Jesus is my All!"

On Love
"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."

"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."

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

"I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I do 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?"

"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."

"In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love."

"I think today the world is upside down, and is suffering so much because there is so very little love in the home, and in family life. We have no time for our children, we have no time for each other, there is no time to enjoy each other."

"Love begins at home; love lives in homes, and that is why there is so much suffering and so much unhappiness in the world today... 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 the peace of the world."

"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."

On Poverty
"I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?" --1974 interview.

"When I see waste here, I feel angry on the inside. I don't approve of myself getting angry. But it's something you can't help after seeing Ethiopia." --Washington 1984.

"The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved."

"The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted."

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

"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."

On her life's work
"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."

"The other day I dreamed that I was at thte gates of heaven. And St. Peter said, 'Go back to Earth. There are no slums up here." --quoted as telling Prince Michael of Greece in 1996.

"The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it."

"Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus."

"Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative of the dignity of my high vocation, and its many responsibilities. Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience."

"There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone's house. That says enough."

"At the end of our lives, we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made or how many great things we have done. We will be judged by 'I was hungry and you gave me to eat. I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless and you took me in."

On Abortion
Abortion "is murder in the womb... A child is a gift of God. If you do not want him, give him to me."

"The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between."

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

On War
"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." -- Beirut 1982, during fighting between the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas.

""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, nor never will justify the suffering, pain and loss of life your weapons will cause." -- Letter to U.S. President George Bush and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, January 1991.