Saint Teresa Sanchez Cepeda Davila y Ahumada of Ávila (1515–82) was a Spanish Carmelite nun and mystic. She is one of the greatest religious women of the Roman Catholic Church.
Born to a prosperous family in Gotarrendura, Spain, Teresa combined a private meditative life with exceptional public activism on behalf of the church. She founded the Discalced Carmelite Order (“discalced,” meaning “shoeless”) with support from St. John of the Cross.
Teresa’s religious writings, including The Way of Perfection (1583) and The Interior Castle (1588,) have inspired spiritual devotion for over three centuries and have spawned a considerable body of scholarly work. Her feast day is October 15.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Teresa of Avila
We know only that we are living in these bodies and have a vague idea, because we have heard it, and because our faith tells us so, that we possess souls. As to what good qualities there may be in our souls, or who dwells within them, or how precious they are, those are things which seldom consider and so we trouble little about carefully preserving the soul’s beauty.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Beauty
It is love alone that gives worth to all things.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Romance
To wish to act like angels while we are still in this world is nothing but folly.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Realization, Realistic Expectations, Expectations, Acceptance, Awareness
Patient endurance attends to all things.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Patience
Let nothing disturb thee;
Let nothing dismay thee;
All thing pass;
God never changes
Patience attains
All that it strives for.
He who has God
Finds he lacks nothing:
God alone suffices.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Christianity
From silly devotions and from sour-faced saints, good Lord, deliver us.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Prayer
To have courage for whatever comes in life—everything lies in that.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Difficulty, Bravery, Courage
To reach something good it is very useful to have gone astray, and thus acquire experience.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Experience
All the way to heaven is heaven.
—Teresa of Avila
Be gentle to all and stern with yourself.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Humanity, Advice
Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours.Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion for the world is to look out; yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good; and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Compassion
Do not dismayed daughters, at the number of things which you have to consider before setting out on this divine journey, which is the royal road to heaven. By taking this road we gain such precious treasures that it is no wonder if the cost seems to us a high one. The time will come when we shall realize that all we have paid has been nothing at all by comparison with the greatness of our prizes.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Possessions, Property
True recollection has characteristics by which it can be easily recognized. It produces a certain effect which I do not know how to explain, but which is well understood by those who have experienced it… . It is true that recollection has several degrees, and that in the beginning these great effects are not felt, because it is not yet profound enough. But support the pain which you first feel in recollecting yourself, despise the rebellion of nature, overcome the resistance of the body, which loves a liberty which is its ruin, learn self-conquest, persevere thus for a time, and you will perceive very clearly the advantages which you gain from it. As soon as you apply yourself to orison, you will at once feel your senses gather themselves together: they seem like bees which return to the hive and there shut themselves up to work at the making of honey: and this will take place without effort or care on your part. God thus rewards the violence which your soul has been doing to itself; and gives to it such a domination over the senses that a sign is enough when it desires to recollect itself, for them to obey and so gather themselves together. At the first call of the will, they come back more and more quickly. At last, after countless exercises of this kind, God disposes them to a state of utter rest and of perfect contemplation.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Reflection
You pay God a compliment by asking great things of Him.
—Teresa of Avila
It is here, my daughters, that love is to be found—not hidden away in corners but in the midst of occasions of sin. And believe me, although we may more often fail and commit small lapses, our gain will be incomparably the greater.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Love
Prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Prayer
How is it Lord, that we are cowards in everything save in opposing Thee?
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Divinity, God, Faith
We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can—namely, surrender our will and fulfill God’s will in us.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Identity, Self-Knowledge
O my God, what must a soul be like when it is in this state! It longs to be all one tongue with which to praise the Lord. It utters a thousand pious follies, in a continuous endeavor to please Him who thus possesses it.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Passion
The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too.
—Teresa of Avila
There seem to me a great many blessings which come from true poverty and I should be sorry to be deprived of them.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Blessings
We bloomed in Spring. Our bodies are the leaves of God. The apparent seasons of life and death our eyes can suffer; but our souls, dear, I will just say this forthright: they are God Himself, we will never perish until He does.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Death
Pain is never permanent.
—Teresa of Avila
Topics: Suffering, Pain
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