Quotes by Therese of Lisieux

“One word or a pleasing smile is often enough to raise up a saddened and wounded soul.”

“Each prayer is more beautiful than the others. I cannot recite them all and not knowing which to choose, I do like children who do not know how to read, I say very simply to God what I wish to say, without composing beautiful sentences, and He always understands me. For me, prayer is an aspiration of the heart, it is a simple glance directed to heaven, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus.”

“Gods way of answering the Christians prayer for more patience, experience, hope and love often is to put him into the furnace of affliction”

“Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant, count as nothing.”

“What we say does not matter - only what God says to souls through us.”

I am not afraid of a fight I have to do my duty come what may.

Trying to do good to people without Gods help is no easier than making the sun shine at midnight. You discover that youve got to abandon all your own preferences your own bright ideas and guide souls along the road our Lord has marked out for them. You mustnt coerce them into some path of your own choosing.

The country in which I live is not my native country that lies elsewhere and it must always be the center of my longings.

The great majority of men use their own short-sighted ideas as a yardstick for measuring the divine omnipotence.

Untilled ground however rich will bring forth thistles and thorns so also the mind of man.

Jesus makes the bitterest mouthful taste sweet.

Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice here by a smiling look there by a kindly word always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.

True love grows by sacrifice and the more thoroughly the soul rejects natural satisfaction the stronger and more detached its tenderness becomes.