Teresa of Avila Quotes

My life is such a contradiction. My soul yearns for holiness and then runs from the mortification necessary to attain it.

I believe that the 'dark night of the soul' is a common spiritual experience. I believe, too, that the answer is continued seeking and perseverance. It helps to know that others have endured a loss of faith.

Day by day we should weigh what we have granted to the spirit of the world against what we have denied to the spirit of Jesus, in thought and especially in deed.

Although the whole man partakes of this grace, it is first and most appropriately in the soul and later progresses to the body, inasmuch as the body of the man is capable of the same obedience to the will of God as the soul.

'Faith and Will' sprang from my personal experience with passing through a dark spiritual time.

The Lord had been very gracious, and spoke peace to me in the time of my distress, and I now most ungratefully turned again to folly; at times I felt sharp reproof, but I did not get low enough to cry for help.

The yogi offers his labyrinthine human longings to a monotheistic bonfire dedicated to the unparalleled God. This is indeed the true yogic fire ceremony, in which all past and present desires are fuel consumed by love divine.

God is shaking me.

I have often thought with wonder of the great goodness of God; and my soul has rejoiced in the contemplation of His great magnificence and mercy. May He be blessed for ever! For I see clearly that He has not omitted to reward me, even in this life, for every one of my good desires.

I am persuaded that the chief reason why we do not enjoy religion is that we do not try to enjoy it.

With this sweet hope of ultimate acceptance with God, I have always enjoyed much cheerfulness before men; but I have at the same time laboured incessantly to cultivate the deepest humiliation before God.

Frequent prayer has great value. On its surface, this sounds simplistic. But if we're to keep prayer at the forefront of our ministry, we and our people have to pray again and again.

Little by little he came to recognize the difference between the spirits that agitated him, one from the enemy and one from God.

Prayer is not about letting God know your will; it's about completely submitting to him. You die to yourself.

I have the ability to create and be in touch with God. I can't change bread and wine into body and blood, but I can take the scum or the slime of the earth and make it into a man or woman.

God wants you well. God wants you prosperous. God wants you a whole person.

I beg the Most High to allow me the favour of the double reward, but if God only finds me worthy of one reward, I will accept it in all humility.

What most of all hinders heavenly consolation is that you are too slow in turning yourself to prayer.

We have peace with God as soon as we believe, but not always with ourselves. The pardon may be past the prince's hand and seal, and yet not put into the prisoner's hand.

If I know my own heart, I do now feel the necessity of resigning myself into the hands of my God, to mould and guide me at His will; tho I dare not say that I am, at present, willing to do it.

I don't know what heavy penance I would not have gladly undertaken rather than practice prayer.

Faith is not a thing which one 'loses', we merely cease to shape our lives by it.

All other ways of mortification are vain, all helps leave us helpless, it must be done by the Spirit.

We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity... But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.

No man is excluded from calling upon God, the gate of salvation is set open unto all men: neither is there any other thing which keepeth us back from entering in, save only our own unbelief.