“One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.”
By Iva-Marie Palmer — Written on Mar 21, 2017
“You’re a regular Mother Teresa.”
If you’re anything like me, you’ve heard this — in a tone positively dripping with sarcasm. I am something of a sinner. (Aren’t we all?) And really, can anyone be a regular Mother Teresa? She was pretty one-of-a-kind.
But for someone who achieved sainthood (she was canonized in September 2016), her advice wasn’t at all holier-than-thou. In fact, she was pretty big on the notion of doing what you can, where you can, when you can.
In this current age of activism and trying to save the world, it can be hard to pick a path and feeling like we have to try to fix everything may actually be the best way to never do anything. Enter Mother Teresa (in a wholly non-ostentatious, non-pyrotechnic, low-key way), who actually urges us all to start fighting the good fight right at home.
Very often, she articulated this in short, sweet, wise ways. Here are just a few inspirational quotes from Mother Teresa to live (and love) by:
1. "If you judge people, you have no time to love them."
2.
“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.”
3. “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”
4. “We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”
5. "I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love."
6.
“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”
7. “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”
8. "Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless."
9.
"Some people come into our life as blessings. Some people come into our life as lessons."
10. "I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together, we can do great things."
11. "I alone cannot change the world but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples."
12. “One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.”
13. “There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use.”
14.
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
15. “We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.”
16. “We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature — trees, flowers, grass — grows in silence; see the stars, the moon, and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.”
17. “I want you to be concerned with your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?”
18. “Love begins by taking care of the closest ones — the ones at home.”
19.
“Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”
20. "It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving."
21. "Do not think that love, to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired."
22.
"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin."
23.
"Do not wait for leaders. Do it alone, person to person."
24. "If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it."
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