Saint Teresa of Avila's Quotes

Be gentle to all and stern with yourself.

Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's, if we are always criticizing trivial actions - which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives.

There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.

To have courage for whatever comes in life - everything lies in that.

The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too.

To reach something good it is very useful to have gone astray, and thus acquire experience.

Pain is never permanent.

Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds.

God has been very good to me, for I never dwell upon anything wrong which a person has done, so as to remember it afterwards. If I do remember it, I always see some other virtue in that person.

All things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted.

Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they enkindle and melt the soul.

I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.

God gave us faculties for our use; each of them will receive its proper reward. Then do not let us try to charm them to sleep, but permit them to do their work until divinely called to something higher.

Don't let your sins turn into bad habits.

The tree that is beside the running water is fresher and gives more fruit.

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.

For prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.

Anyone who truly loves God travels securely.

I know the power obedience has of making things easy which seem impossible.

Do you think it is only a little thing to possess a house from which lovely things can be seen?

We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can - namely, surrender our will and fulfill God's will in us.

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.

A wingnut is someone on the far-right wing or far-left wing of the political spectrum - the professional partisans, the unhinged activists and the paranoid conspiracy theorists. They're the people who always try to divide rather than unite us.

First, I think more Americans need to declare their independence from partisan politics on both sides. The more that Americans declare their independence, the more the parties will have to compete for their votes using reason rather than the hateful appeals.

I'm an independent. I'm a centrist. A new generation is arriving that has grown up with a multiplicity of choice in every aspect of their lives, and yet politics is the last place that they are told that they should be satisfied with a choice between brand A and brand B. It doesn't fit the way they think. It doesn't fit the way they live.