"We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can - namely, surrender our will and fulfill God's will in us."
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Teresa of Avila quotes (page 9 of 15)
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"Ah, how true it is that we love ourselves too much and proceed with too much human prudence, that we may not lose an atom of our consideration! Oh, what a great mistake that is! The Saints did not act thus."
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"True perfection consists in the love of God and our neighbour, and the better we keep both these commandments, the more perfect we shall be."
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"Life is a night spent in an uncomfortable inn."
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"If we plant a flower or a shrub and water it daily it will grow so tall that in time we shall need a spade and a hoe to uproot it. It is just so, I think, when we commit a fault, however small, each day, and do not cure ourselves of it."
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"The life of the spirit is not our life, but the life of God within us."
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"His Majesty knows best what is suitable for us. There's no need for us to be advising Him about what He should give us, for He can rightly tell us that we don't know what we're asking for (cf. Mt. 20:22). The whole aim of any person who is beginning prayer ? and don't forget this, because it's very important ? should be that he work and prepare himself with determination and every possible effort to bring his will into conformity with God's will."
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"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."
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"What a miserable life is this! There is no happiness that is secure and nothing that does not change."
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"I am really much more afraid of those people who have so great a fear of the devil, than I am of the devil himself."
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"That is how His Majesty [the Lord] rewards our good works---I mean, by predisposing us to perform better ones."
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"Nothing can be compared to the great beauty and capabilities of a soul; however keen our intellects may be, they are as unable to comprehend them as to comprehend God, for, as He has told us, He created us in His own image and likeness."
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"We cannot be sure if we are loving God, although we may have good reasons for believing that we are, but we can know quite well if we are loving our neighbor. And be certain that, the farther advanced you find you are in this, the greater the love you will have for God."
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"The most potent and acceptable prayer is the prayer that leaves the best effects. I don't mean it must immediately fill the soul with desire . . . The best effects are those that are followed up by actions-when the soul not only desires the honor of God, but really strives for it."
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"I felt a great dislike to journeys, especially when they were long. But once I had started, I thought nothing of them, thinking of Him for Whose service they were undertaken and remembering that Our Lord would be praised and the most Holy Sacrament would dwell in the house I was going to found... It should be a great consolation to us - though many of us do not think of it - that Jesus Christ, true God and true man, dwells as He does in so many places in the most Holy Sacrament"
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"His Majesty [the Lord] . . . rewards great services with trials, and there can be no better reward, for out of trials springs love for God."
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"When I took the habit, the Lord immediately showed me how He favours those who do violence to themselves in order to serve Him. No one saw what I endured... At the moment of my entrance into this new state I felt a joy so great that it has never failed me even to this day; and God converted the dryness of my soul into a very great tenderness."
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"Patient endurance / Attaineth to all things."
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"When the soul, through its own fault... becomes rooted in a pool of pitch-black, evil smelling water, it produces nothing but misery and filth."
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"God aids the valiant...both to you and to me He will give the help needed."
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