“If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives: Be kind anyway. If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies: Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank people will try to cheat you: Be honest anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight: Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous of you: Be happy anyway. The good you do today will often be forgotten by tomorrow: Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough: Give your best anyway.” ~ Mother Teresa

There are so many beautiful, inspiring and life changing lessons to learn from this beautiful, kind and loving woman and today I would like to share with you some of her most inspiring quotes compiled as:

17 Life Changing Lessons to Learn from Mother Teresa

1. There is no greater hunger than the hunger of the heart.

“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. 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. 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

“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”

“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.”

2. Loneliness is the leprosy of the modern world.

“Loneliness is the leprosy of the modern world.” ~ Mother Teresa

“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.”

3. No man is an island. 

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

4. Judgment prevents us from seeing the good in people.

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” ~ Mother Teresa

5. You don’t have to love the whole world. You only have to love one another.

“Jesus said love one another. He didn’t say love the whole world.” ~ 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.”

“Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own home. 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. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting.” ~Mother Teresa

6. We have all been created for great things.

“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

7. Your work matters. Do it with Love.

“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

“Work without love is slavery.”

“We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.”

“I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.”

“It’s not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.”

“I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I 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?”

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

8. Love and peace begin with a smile.

“Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.” ~ Mother Teresa

“Peace begins with a smile.”

“Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.”

“Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.”

9. God’s one and only voice is silence.

“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.”

“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.”

10. If you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

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

11. You are never given more than you can handle.

“I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.”

12. You only have today, and when tomorrow comes, it will be today.

“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”

13. Peace begins at home.

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

14. Prayer is not about asking.

“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.”

15. Don’t wait for leaders to change your world.

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

“Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.”

16. Patience is a great teacher.

“Without patience, we will learn less in life. We will see less. We will feel less. We will hear less. Ironically, rush and more usually mean less.”

17. The greatest science in the world is LOVE.

“The greatest science in the world; in heaven and on earth; is love.”

~love, Luminita💫

What is your favorite quote from Mother Teresa? What is the one lesson you have learned from this beautiful and amazing Soul?  You can share your insights by joining the conversation in the comment section below 🙂

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