Therese of Lisieux Soul Quotations

As the sun shines both on the cedar and the smallest flower, so the Divine sun illumines each soul.

A word or a smile is often enough to put fresh life in a despondent soul.

I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.

Silence does good to the soul.

My soul experienced a peace so sweet, so deep, it would be impossible to express it.

I also understood that God's love shows itself just as well in the simplest soul which puts up no resistance to His grace as it does in the loftiest soul.

The guest of our soul knows our misery; He comes to find an empty tent within us - that is all He asks.

God would turn the world around to find suffering in order to give it to a soul upon whom He has set His Divine gaze with ineffable love.

Time is but a shadow, a dream; already God sees us in glory and takes joy in our eternal beatitude. How this thought helps my soul! I understand then why He lets us suffer.

It is not to remain in a golden ciborium that He comes down each day from Heaven, but to find another Heaven, the Heaven of our soul in which He takes delight.

Prayer and sacrifice can touch souls better than words.

(On entering Carmel) I came to save souls and especially to pray for priests.

The greatest honor God can do a soul is not give it much; but to ask much of it.

When Charity is deeply rooted in the soul it shows itself exteriorly: there is so gracious a way of refusing what we cannot give, that the refusal pleases as much as the gift.

I am convinced that one should tell one's spiritual director if one has a great desire for Communion, for Our Lord does not come from Heaven every day to stay in a golden ciborium; He comes to find another heaven, the heaven of our soul in which He loves to dwell.