Saint Teresa of Avila

Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's, if we are always criticizing trivial actions - which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives.

All things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted.

Be gentle to all and stern with yourself.

Nothing can be compared to the great beauty and capabilities of a soul; however keen our intellects may be, they are as unable to comprehend them as to comprehend God, for, as He has told us, He created us in His own image and likeness.

What value is there in faith without works? And what are they worth if they are not united to the merits of Jesus Christ, our only good?

To have courage for whatever comes in life - everything lies in that.

Whoever has not begun the practice of prayer, I beg for the love of the Lord not to go without so great a good. There is nothing here to fear but only something to desire.

I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.

To reach something good it is very useful to have gone astray, and thus acquire experience.

May God protect me from gloomy saints.

When I took the habit, the Lord immediately showed me how He favours those who do violence to themselves in order to serve Him. No one saw what I endured... At the moment of my entrance into this new state I felt a joy so great that it has never failed me even to this day; and God converted the dryness of my soul into a very great tenderness.

God has been very good to me, for I never dwell upon anything wrong which a person has done, so as to remember it afterwards. If I do remember it, I always see some other virtue in that person.

For prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.

The custom of speaking to God Almighty as freely as with a slave - caring nothing whether the words are suitable or not, but simply saying the first thing that comes to mind from being learnt by rote by frequent repetition - cannot be called prayer: God grant that no Christian may address Him in this manner.

Those who give themselves to prayer should in a special manner have always a devotion to St. Joseph; for I know not how any man can think of the Queen of the angels, during the time that she suffered so much with the Infant Jesus, without giving thanks to St. Joseph for the services he rendered them then.

I know the power obedience has of making things easy which seem impossible.

We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can - namely, surrender our will and fulfill God's will in us.

It is no small misfortune and disgrace that, through our own fault, we neither understand our nature nor our origin.