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God prefers your health, and your obedience, to your penance.

Teresa of Avila

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Teresa of Avila
Penance
Prefers
Obedience
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Health

More quotes by Teresa of Avila

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The important thing is not to think much but to love much do, then, whatever most arouses you to love.
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To wish to act like angels while we are still in this world is nothing but folly.
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I was living an extremely burdensome life, because every time I prayed, I became more clearly aware of my faults. On the one hand, God was calling me. On the other, I was following the way of the world. Doing what God wanted made me happy but I felt bound by the things of this world.
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This body of ours has one fault: the more you indulge it, the more things it discovers to be essential to it. It is extraordinary how it likes being indulged.
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It is love alone that gives worth to all things.
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How is it that we do not die of love in seeing that God Himself could do no more than shed His divine blood for us drop by drop? When as man He was preparing for death, He made Himself our food in order to give us life. God becomes food, bread for his creatures. Is this not enough to make us die of love?
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How poor is the wisdom of men, and how uncertain their forecast!
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Hope, O my soul, hope. Watch carefully, for everything passes quickly, even though your impatience turns a very short time into a long one.
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Alas, O Lord, to what a state dost Thou bring those who love Thee!
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True love grows by sacrifice and the more thoroughly the soul rejects natural satisfaction the stronger and more detached its tenderness becomes.
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Her heart is full of joy with love, for in the Lord her mind is stilled. She has renounced every selfish attachment and draws abiding joy and strength from the One within. She lives not for herself, but lives to serve the Lord of Love in all, and swims across the sea of life breasting its rough waves joyfully.
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If this is the way You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few!
Teresa of Avila
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I had a father and mother, who were devout and feared God. Our Lord also helped me with His grace. All this would have been enough to make me good, if I had not been so wicked.
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If we do not use great care to mortify our will, there are many things which can deprives us of the holy freedom of spirit that we are seeking in order to fly more freely to our Creator, without always being bogged down with the clay of this earth. Moreover, there can never be solid virtue in a soul that is attached to its own will.
Teresa of Avila
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The surest way to determine whether one possesses the love of God is to see whether he or she loves his or her neighbor. These two loves are never separated. Rest assured, the more you progress in love of neighbor the more your love of God will increase.
Teresa of Avila
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Whoever has not begun the practice of prayer, I beg for the love of the Lord not to go without so great a good. There is nothing here to fear but only something to desire.
Teresa of Avila
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Those seeking the life of the spirit should be cheerful and free, and not neglect recreation. Married people must act in conformity with their vocation--but their progress will of necessity be but the pace of a hen.
Teresa of Avila
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Let us look at our own faults, and not other people's. We ought not to insist on everyone following in our footsteps, nor to take upon ourselves to give instructions in spirituality when, perhaps, we do not even know what it is.
Teresa of Avila
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Contemplative prayer [oración mental] in my opinion is nothing else than a close sharing between friends it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us.
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For, as I said a little way back, perfect souls are in no way repelled by trials, but rather desire them and pray for them and love them. They are like soldiers: the more wars there are, the better they are pleased, because they hope to emerge from them with the greater riches.
Teresa of Avila