110+ Mother Teresa Quotes On Service, Humanity And Kindness

Mother Teresa was an Albanian-born Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary. She was born in 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia and died in 1997 in Calcutta, India. She is known for her humanitarian work, which focused on helping the poor, sick, and dying, and earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Mother Teresa on service, love, humanity.

Top 10 Mother Teresa Quotes

1. Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.
2. Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
3. Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.
4. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.
5. If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
6. I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us, and we change things.
7. If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.
8. I don't do great things. I do small things with great love.
9. Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.
10. None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.

Mother Teresa Short Quotes

• Your true character Is most accurately measured by how you treat those who can do 'Nothing' for you
• Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. Focus on big things.
• God doesn't require us to succeed, he only requires that you try.
• Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway.
• There is no key to happiness, the door is always open.
• I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.
• Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home.
• There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter.
• Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.
• Do ordinary things with extraordinary love.

Mother Teresa Quotes About Service

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

Love cannot remain by itself - it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action and that action is service. — Mother Teresa

Give, but give until it hurts. — Mother Teresa

Faith in action is love, and love in action is service. By transforming that faith into living acts of love, we put ourselves in contact with God Himself, with Jesus our Lord. — Mother Teresa

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. — Mother Teresa

The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace. And peace begins with a smile. — Mother Teresa

Get to know the poor in your country. Love them. Serve them. — Mother Teresa

Charity isn't about pity, it is about love. — Mother Teresa

The trouble is that rich people, well-to-do people, very often don't really know who the poor are; and that is why we can forgive them, for knowledge can only lead to love, and love to service. And so, if they are not touched by them, it's because they do not know them — Mother Teresa

Prayer makes your heart bigger, until it is capable of containing the gift of God himself. Prayer begets faith, faith begets love, and love begets service on behalf of the poor. — Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes About Love

On the British Royal Divorce (Charles and Dianna). She is such a sad soul. It is good that it is over. Nobody was happy anyhow. I know I should preach family love and unity, but in their case. . . . — Mother Teresa

And so let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love, and once we begin to love each other naturally we want to do something. — Mother Teresa

To Almighty God, it's not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving. Love is not measured by how much we do; love is measured by how much love we put in; how much it is hurting us in loving. — Mother Teresa

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

If you can't do great things, do little things with great love. If you can't do them with great love, do them with a little love. If you can't do them with a little love, do them anyway. — Mother Teresa

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. — Mother Teresa

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. — Mother Teresa

People who love each other fully and truly are the happiest people in the world. They may have little, they may have nothing, but they are happy people. Everything depends on how we love one another. — Mother Teresa

What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family. — Mother Teresa

Whatever our religion, we know that if we really want to love, we must first learn to forgive before anything else. — Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes About Humanity

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

I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and tend to him. I serve becuase I love Jesus. — Mother Teresa

Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. — Mother Teresa

The coming of Jesus at Bethlehem brought joy to the world and to every human heart. may His coming this Christmas bring to each one of us that peace and joy that He desires to give. — Mother Teresa

I will never tire of repeating this: what the poor need the most is not pity but love. They need to feel respect for their human dignity, which is neither less nor different from the dignity of any other human being. — Mother Teresa

Hungry not only for bread - but hungry for love. Naked not only for clothing - but naked of human dignity and respect. Homeless not only for want of a home of bricks - but homeless because of rejection. — Mother Teresa

For me, life is the most beautiful gift of God to mankind, therefore people and nations who destroy life by abortion and euthanasia are the poorest. I do not say legal or illegal, but I think that no human hand should be raised to kill life, since life is God's life in us, even in an unborn child. — Mother Teresa

We must remember that life begins at home and we must also remember that the future of humanity passes through the family — Mother Teresa

People have forgotten what the human touch is, what it is to smile, for somebody to smile at them, somebody to recognize them, somebody to wish them well. The terrible thing is to be unwanted. — Mother Teresa

Our hours of adoration will be special hours of reparation for sins, and intercession for the needs of the whole world, exposing the sin-sick and suffering humanity to the healing, sustaining and transforming rays of Jesus, radiating from the Eucharist. — Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes About Leadership

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

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

We can do no great things-only small things with great love. — Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes About Kindness

Speak tenderly; let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of your greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don't only give your care, but give your heart as well. — Mother Teresa

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. — Mother Teresa

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. — Mother Teresa

If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. — Mother Teresa

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God - the rest will be given. — Mother Teresa

Be kind to each other. It is better to commit faults with gentleness than to work miracles with unkindness. — Mother Teresa

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight; build it anyway. — Mother Teresa

I would rather make mistakes in kindness and compassion than work miracles in unkindness and hardness. — Mother Teresa

Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God — Mother Teresa

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. — Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes About Peace And Love

Peace and war begin at home. If we truly want peace in the world, let us begin by loving one another in our own families. If we want to spread joy, we need for every family to have joy. — Mother Teresa

When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Prize, she was asked, "What can we do to promote world peace?" She answered "Go home and love your family. — Mother Teresa

Let us not use bombs and guns to overcome the world. Let us use love and compassion. Peace begins with a smile. — Mother Teresa

I must be willing to give whatever it takes to do good to others. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts. Otherwise, there is no true love in me, and I bring injustice, not peace, to those around me. — Mother Teresa

The greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion, which is war against the child. The mother doesn't learn to love, but kills to solve her own problems. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. — Mother Teresa

All works of love are works of peace. — Mother Teresa

I think that we in our family don't need bombs and guns, to destroy to bring peace - just get together, love one another, bring that peace, that joy, that strength of presence of each other in the home. And we will be able to overcome all the evil that is in the world. — Mother Teresa

Let us use love and compassion. Peace begins with a smile. Smile five times a day at someone you don't really want to smile at at all. Do it for peace. — Mother Teresa

Keep your heart pure. A pure heart is necessary to see God in each other. If you see God in each other, there is love for each other, then there is peace. — Mother Teresa

Make us worthy Lord to serve our fellow men throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them through our hands this day their daily bread and by our understanding love, give peace and joy. — Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes About Prayer

You can pray while you work. Work doesn't stop prayer and prayer doesn't stop work. It requires only that small raising of the mind to him: I love you God, I trust you, I believe in you, I need you now. Small things like that. They are wonderful prayers. — Mother Teresa

God has created us to love and to be loved, and this is the beginning of prayer-to know that He loves me, that I have been created for greater things. — Mother Teresa

Joy is prayer. Joy is strength. Joy is love. Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. God loves a cheerful giver. She gives most who gives with joy. — Mother Teresa

May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in. — Mother Teresa

In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence. — Mother Teresa

Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration with exposition needs a great push. People ask me: 'What will convert America and save the world?' My answer is prayer. What we need is for every parish to come before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in holy hours of prayer. — Mother Teresa

God speaks in the silence of the heart, and we listen. And then we speak to God from the fullness of our heart, and God listens. And this listening and this speaking is what prayer is meant to be. — Mother Teresa

Joy is the characteristic by which God uses us to re-make the distressing into the desired, the discarded into the creative. Joy is prayer-Joy is strength-Joy is love-Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. — Mother Teresa

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

We need prayer to understand God's love for us. If we really mean to pray and want to pray we must be ready to do it now. These are only the first steps towards prayer but if we never make the first step with determination, we will not reach the last one: the presence of God — Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes About Giving

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway. — Mother Teresa

The poor are great! The poor are wonderful! The poor are very generous! They give us much more than what we give them. — Mother Teresa

Intense love does not measure, it just gives. — Mother Teresa

If you have a sick or lonely person at home, be there. Maybe just to hold a hand, maybe just to give a smile, that is the greatest, the most beautiful work. — Mother Teresa

The trees, the flowers, the plants grow in silence. The stars, the sun, the moon move in silence. Silence gives us a new perspective. — Mother Teresa

A joyful heart is the normal result of a heart burning with love. She gives most who gives with joy. — Mother Teresa

Spread love everywhere you go; first of all in your house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor. Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. — Mother Teresa

Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness. — Mother Teresa

Give your hands to serve and your hearts to love. — Mother Teresa

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. — Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes About Humility

We learn humility through accepting humiliations cheerfully. — Mother Teresa

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

The true way and the sure way to friendship is through humility-being open to each other, accepting each other just as we are, knowing each other. — Mother Teresa

The more you forget yourself, the more Jesus will think of you. — Mother Teresa

Mary, my dearest Mother, give me your heart so beautiful, so pure, so immaculate, your heart so full of love and humility, that I may be able to receive Jesus in the Bread of Life, love Him as you loved Hitn and serve Him in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor. — Mother Teresa

Only humility will lead us to unity, and unity will lead to peace. — Mother Teresa

Self knowledge puts us on our knees, and it is very necessary for love. For knowledge of God gives love, and knowledge of self gives humility — Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes About Forgiveness

We must make our homes centers of compassion and forgive endlessly. — Mother Teresa

For all those who make such stories which are not true, I only say God forgive all these people. I feel sorry for them because they are doing so much harm to themselves. — Mother Teresa

People ask me what advice I have for a married couple struggling in their relationship. I always answer: pray and forgive. And to young people from violent homes, I say: pray and forgive. And again, even to the single mother with no family support: pray and forgive. — Mother Teresa

Every adult was once a child free from prejudice. — Mother Teresa

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. — Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes About Smile

Peace begins with a smile.. — Mother Teresa

No matter how tired you are, no matter how physically exhausting this work may be, it's beautiful to bring a smile into someone's life, to care for someone in need. What greater joy can there be? — Mother Teresa

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do. — Mother Teresa

It is Christmas every time you let God love others through you...yes, it is Christmas every time you smile at your brother and offer him your hand. — Mother Teresa

Holiness does not consist in doing extraordinary things. It consists in accepting, with a smile, what Jesus sends us. It consists in accepting and following the will of God. — Mother Teresa

Peace begins with a smile. I will never understand all the good that a simple smile can accomplish. — Mother Teresa

The person who gives with a smile is the best giver because God loves a cheerful giver. — Mother Teresa

Make sure that you let God's grace work in your souls by accepting whatever He gives you, and giving Him whatever He takes from you. True holiness consists in doing God's work with a smile. — Mother Teresa

Smile at each other. Smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other- it doesn't matter who it is- and that will help to grow up in greater love for each other. — Mother Teresa

Peace starts with a smile — Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes About Inspirational

Be happy in the moment, that's enough. Each moment is all we need, not more. — Mother Teresa

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

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

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

It is Christmas every time you let God love others through you. — Mother Teresa

People are unrealistic, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway. — Mother Teresa

It is a kingly act to assist the fallen. — Mother Teresa

To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it. — Mother Teresa

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. — Mother Teresa

A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, and must empty ourselves. Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in his love than in your weakness. — Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes About Life

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize it — Mother Teresa

There are so many religions and each one has its different ways of following God. I follow Christ: Jesus is my God, Jesus is my Spouse, Jesus is my Life, Jesus is my only Love, Jesus is my All in All; Jesus is my Everything. — Mother Teresa

Death is nothing else but going home to God, the bond of love will be unbroken for all eternity. — Mother Teresa

We must not be surprised when we hear of murders, killings, of wars, or of hatred...If a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for us to kill each other? — Mother Teresa

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

America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. — Mother Teresa

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. — Mother Teresa

A life not lived for others is not a life. — Mother Teresa

Once that living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follows very easily. — Mother Teresa

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. — Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Quotes About Work

Good works are links that form a chain of love" Mother Theresa — Mother Teresa

There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use. — Mother Teresa

You may be exhausted with work, you may even kill yourself, but unless your work is interwoven with love, it is useless. To work without love is slavery. — Mother Teresa

There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in - that we do it to God, to Christ, and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible. — Mother Teresa

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. — Mother Teresa

We must know that we have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world, not just to go for diplomas and degrees, this work and that work. We have been created in order to love and to be loved. — Mother Teresa

Without our suffering, our work would simply be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the Redemption. — Mother Teresa

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

I am Albanian by birth. Now I am a citizen of India. I am also a Catholic nun. In my work, I belong to the whole world. But in my heart, I belong to Christ. — Mother Teresa

What you are doing I cannot do, what I'm doing you cannot do, but together we are doing something beautiful for God, and this is the greatness of God's love for us-To give us the opportunity to become holy through the works of love that we do because holiness is not the luxury of the few. — Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa Famous Quotes And Sayings

There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain. Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call and answer in extraordinary ways. — Mother Teresa

I used to pray that God would feed the hungry, or do this or that, but now I pray that he will guide me to do whatever I'm supposed to do, what I can do. I used to pray for answers, but now I'm praying for strength. I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things. — Mother Teresa

If you are discouraged it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own power. Your self-sufficiency, your selfishness and your intellectual pride will inhibit His coming to live in your heart because God cannot fill what is already full. It is as simple as that. — Mother Teresa

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. — Mother Teresa

I am nothing; I am but an instrument, a tiny pencil in the hands of the Lord with which He writes what he likes. However imperfect we are, he writes beautifully. — Mother Teresa

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. — Mother Teresa

People are generally irrational, unreasonable and selfish. They deserve to be loved, anyway. — Mother Teresa

God didn't call me to be successful, He called me to be faithful. — Mother Teresa

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody. — Mother Teresa

Love to be real, it must cost—it must hurt—it must empty us of self. — Mother Teresa

If each of us would only sweep our own doorstep, the whole World would be clean. — Mother Teresa

The highest form of worship is to find the least among you and treat them like Jesus. — Mother Teresa

In the end, dear friend, it is always between us and God, not between us and them. — Mother Teresa

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. — Mother Teresa

A clean heart is a free heart. A free heart can love Christ with an undivided love in chastity, convinced that nothing and nobody will separate it from his love. Purity, chastity, and virginity created a special beauty in Mary that attracted God's attention. He showed his great love for the world by giving Jesus to her. — Mother Teresa

If you 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. — Mother Teresa

Go out into the world today and love the people you meet. Let your presence light new light in the hearts of people. — Mother Teresa

We have not come into the world to be numbered; we have been created for a purpose; for great things: to love and be loved. — Mother Teresa

I'm a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world. — Mother Teresa

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

I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor? — Mother Teresa

Abortion kills twice. It kills the body of the baby and it kills the conscience of the mother. Abortion is profoundly anti-women. Three quarters of its victims are women: Half the babies and all the mothers. — Mother Teresa

Do we know our poor people? Do we know the poor in our house, in our family? Perhaps they are not hungry for a piece of bread. Perhaps our children, husband, wife, are not hungry, or naked, or dispossessed, but are you sure there is no one there who feels unwanted, deprived of affection? — Mother Teresa

If I look at the mass I will never act. — Mother Teresa

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or cancer or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling or being unwanted, uncared for, deserted by everybody. The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference towards one's neighbor who lives at the roadside, the victim of exploitation, corruption, poverty, and disease. — Mother Teresa

God loves me. I'm not here just to fill a place, just to be a number. He has chosen me for a purpose. I know it. — Mother Teresa

I can't help thousands, I can help only the one who stands before me. — Mother Teresa

Little things are indeed little, but to be faithful in little things is a great thing. — Mother Teresa

Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world. — Mother Teresa

People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Love them anyway.... Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.... What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. .. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you've got anyway. — Mother Teresa

Life Lessons by Mother Teresa

1. Mother Teresa taught us the importance of compassion and selflessness, emphasizing the need to help those in need and serve others with love and kindness.
2. She also showed us the power of faith and perseverance, continuing her work despite difficult circumstances and inspiring others to do the same.
3. Finally, she demonstrated the value of humility, never seeking recognition or reward for her work and instead focusing on the greater good.