Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta: Fifteen Favorite Quotes

Mary E. Mark - Mother Teresa laughing (1980)

September 5 is the feast day of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta. In her honor, I would like to share fifteen of my favorite Mother Teresa quotes.

1. “By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.”

2. "God still loves the world and He sends you and me to be His love and His compassion to the poor.”

3. "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."

4. "We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do."

5.  "I know that couples have to plan their family and for that there is natural family planning. The way to plan the family is natural family planning, not contraception. In destroying the power of giving life, through contraception, a husband or wife is doing something to self. This turns the attention to self and so it destroys the gifts of love in him or her. In loving, the husband and wife must turn the attention to each other as happens in natural family planning, and not to self, as happens in contraception. Once that living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follows very easily."

6. "I also know that there are great problems in the world - that many spouses do not love each other enough to practice natural family planning. We cannot solve all the problems in the world, but let us never bring in the worst problem of all, and that is to destroy love. And this is what happens when we tell people to practice contraception and abortion."

7.  "The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between."  

8. “Mary my Mother, give me your heart so beautiful, so pure, so Immaculate, so full of love and humility, that I may be able to receive Jesus.”

9. "Each time we look upon Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, He raises us up into deeper union with Himself, opens up the floodgates of His merciful love to the whole world, and brings us closer to the day of His final victory 'where every knee will bend and proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord' The reign of God is already in your midst. The coming of Jesus to us in the Eucharist is assurance of His promise of final victory: "BEHOLD, I COME TO MAKE ALL THINGS NEW."

10. "A child is God's greatest gift to the family, to the nation, to the world. The child is a life from God, created in the image of God, created for great things, to love and to be loved."

11. "Please don't kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted, and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child, and be loved by the child. From our children's home in Calcutta alone, we have saved over 3,000 children from abortions. These children have brought such love and joy to their adopting parents, and have grown up so full of love and joy!"

12. "That special power of loving that belongs to a woman is seen most clearly when she becomes a mother. Motherhood is the gift of God to women...Yet we can destroy this gift of motherhood, especially by the evil of abortion .... No job, no plans, no possessions, no idea of 'freedom' can take the place of love."

13. "There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness, and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much."

14. "Every act of love is a work of peace, no matter how small."

15. "If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive."