Teresa of Avila Quotes

Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.

Prayer for worldly goods is worse than fruitless, but prayer for strength of soul is that passion of the soul which catches the gift it seeks.

In prayer the soul comes nearest the experience of absolute love: in belief it ascends by means of symbols towards absolute truth.

None can believe how powerful prayer is, and what it is able to effect, but those who have learned it by experience.

Intercession means raising ourselves up to the point of getting the mind of Christ regarding the person for whom we are praying.

He who prays without confidence cannot hope that his prayers will be granted.

What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.

The shortening of devotions starves the soul, it grows lean and faint

When you pray, remember that you are not praying to a distant God, but to the God that dwells within you. Don't just speak the words; feel what they mean in your life. Don't pray from your lips, but from your heart. Your prayers aren't for God, they are for you, to remind you of the presence of the Holy Spirit within you. When you say "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done," remember that you are loved and protected. God has planned greater things for us than we can imagine. The more we maintain an awareness of God's unchanging love, the safer and more at home we will feel in the world.

To me life means the growing of a soul. I do not know why this duty is imposed upon us. I merely know that it is, and I feel that we are given much latitude of free will.

..the true test of spirituality [is] in the freedom to live among people compassionately....Prayer frees us to be controlled by God.

Prayer, the basic exercise of the spirit, must be actively practiced in our private lives. The neglected soul of the human being must be made strong enough to assert itself once more. For if the power of prayer is again released and used in the lives of common men and women; if the spirit declares its aims clearly and boldly, there is yet hope that our prayers for a better world will be answered.

Men would pray better if they lived better. They would get more from God if they lived more obedient and well-pleasing to God.

The things we pray for, good Lord, give us grace to labor for.

Prayer power is real. By putting it into action, we will be able to stay more constantly in higher awareness than ever before. If we can do that, the world will quickly change.

We are urgent about the body; He is about the soul. We call for present comforts; He considers our everlasting rest. And therefore when He sends not the very things we ask, He hears us by sending greater than we can ask or think.

It is impossible to conduct your life as a disciple without definite times of secret prayer

Christ choosing solitude for private prayer, doth not only hint to us the danger of distraction and deviation of thoughts in prayer, but how necessary it is for us to choose the most convenient places we can for private prayer. Our own fickleness and Satan's restlessness call upon us to get into such places where we may freely pour out our soul into the bosom of God [Mark 1.35].

Prayer and sacrifice can touch souls better than words.

Prayer draws us near to our own souls.

Meditation is the means through which the Soul dictates and guides the mind for all good.

Prayer enables us to transform the world because it transforms us.

Piety is not an end, but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquility of soul. Hence it may be observed that those who set up piety as an end and object are mostly hypocrites.

In Shansi I found Chinese Christians who were accustomed to spend time in fasting and prayer. They recognized that this fasting, which so many dislike, which requires faith in God, since it makes one feel weak and poorly, is really a Divinely appointed means of grace. Perhaps the greatest hindrance to our work is our own imagined strength; and in fasting we learn what poor, weak creatures we are-dependent on a meal of meat for the little strength which we are so apt to lean upon.

Methinks every true Christian should be exceedingly earnest in prayer concerning the souls of the ungodly; and when they are so, how abundantly God blesses them and how the church prospers!