The common theme of her words reflect her work with the lonely, the sick, the dying and the destitute. Her unending love came through in her work and in her words. She was forever compassionate towards the loneliness felt by “wealthy” people who on surface had it all. She was also very concerned about the breakdown of families.
Here are a selection of her words which say it all :
• Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.
• I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
• 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.
• Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.
• Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world.
• It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.
• If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
• Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.
• Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.
• Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
• Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.
• Peace begins with a smile.
• Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.
• The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
• The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.
• The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
• The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done.
• There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.
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.
• Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
• Good works are links that form a chain of love.
• In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.
Mother Teresa’s message of love and hope lives on - it is now up to all of us to continue her work and make the world a better place.