Teresa of Avila Quotes on God
Teresa of Avila, the Spanish Carmelite mystic and reformer, wrote of God out of a long personal experience of contemplative prayer, and the quotes gathered here reflect that. Her most beloved lines, preserved as a poem and known as the Bookmark Prayer, counsel an unshakable trust grounded in God's constancy: let nothing disturb you, for all things pass while God never changes, and God alone suffices. Teresa urges the soul to praise God in all created things and treats self-knowledge and the knowledge of God as inseparable, for we shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavoring to know God. Drawn from the Interior Castle, her maxims, and her verse, these passages present God as the soul's true centre and final rest, reached through the stages of prayer she charted. Several widely quoted sayings are marked as attributed.
Quotes
-
Attributed to Teresa of Avila:
“Christ has no body now but yours; no hands, no feet on earth, but yours.”
-
Attributed to Teresa of Avila:
“Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you. All things are passing; God never changes.”
-
Attributed to Teresa of Avila:
“More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.”
-
Attributed to Teresa of Avila:
“Mental prayer is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends.”
-
“Let nothing disturb thee; Let nothing dismay thee: All things pass; God never changes. Patience attains All that it strives for. He who has God Finds he lacks nothing: God alone suffices.”
Poem IX", in Complete Works St. Teresa of Avila (1963) edited by E. Allison Peers, Vol. 3, p. 288 -
“Reflect upon the providence and wisdom of God in all created things and praise Him in them all.”
Maxims for Her Nuns (1963) | Maxim 35, p. 258 -
“Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love , for they enkindle and melt the soul .”
Maxims for Her Nuns (1963) | Maxim 52, p. 259 -
“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.”
Interior Castle(1577) | Fourth Mansions, Ch. 3: Prayer of Quiet, as translated by the Benedictines of Stanbrook (1911), revised and edited by Fr. Benedict Zimmerman -
“We shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavoring to know God ; for, beholding His greatness we realize our own littleness ; His purity shows us our foulness; and by meditating upon His humility we find how very far we are from being humble.”
Interior Castle(1577) | First Mansions, Ch. 2 : The Human Soul, as translated by the Benedictines of Stanbrook (1911), revised and edited by Fr. Benedict Zimmerman