Pure love ... knows that only one thing is needed to please God: to do even the smallest things out of great love - love, and always love. (140)
--Divine Mercy in My Soul, St. Faustina
"Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor... Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting."
--Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta
"The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist."
--Pope St. Gregory the Great
The things that we love tell us what we are.
--Saint Thomas Aquinas
"What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like."
--St. Augustine of Hippo
"My director, Jesus, does not teach me to count my acts, but to do everything for love, to refuse Him nothing, to be pleased when He gives me a chance to prove to Him that I love Him - but all this in peace - in abandonment."
--St. Therese of Lisieux in a letter to Celine, July 6, 1893
"Lord, grant that I might not so much seek to be loved as to love."
--Saint Francis of Assisi
"Our Lord loves you and loves you tenderly; and if He does not let you feel the sweetness of His love, it is to make you more humble and abject in your own eyes."
--St. Pio of Pietrelcino
"We must love our neighbor as being made in the image of God and as an object of His love."
--Saint Vincent de Paul
"Love to be real, it must cost—it must hurt—it must empty us of self."
--Mother Teresa
"What a weakness it is to love Jesus Christ only when He caresses us, and to be cold immediately once He afflicts us. This is not true love. Those who love thus, love themselves too much to love God with all their heart."
--St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
"The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Love; It signifies Love, It produces love. The Eucharist is the consummation of the whole spiritual life."
--Saint Thomas Aquinas
Charity is the sweet and holy bond which links the soul with its Creator: it binds God with man and man with God.
--Saint Catherine of Siena
'The person who loves God cannot help loving every man as himself, even though he is grieved by the passions of those who are not yet purified. But when they amend their lives, his delight is indescribable and knows no bounds. A soul filled with thoughts of sensual desire and hatred is unpurified. If we detect any trace of hatred in our hearts against any man whatsoever for committing any fault, we are utterly estranged from love for God, since love for God absolutely precludes us from hating any man.'
--St. Maximos the Confessor
Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind.
--Saint Catherine of Siena
What is the mark of love for your neighbor? Not to seek what is for your own benefit, but what is for the benefit of the one loved, both in body and in soul.
--St. Basil the Great
"You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working, and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves."
--St. Francis de Sales
"Everything comes from love,
all is ordained for the salvation of man,
God does nothing without this goal in mind."
--St. Catherine of Siena
One must see God in everyone.
--St. Catherine Laboure
"We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love"
--Blessed Mother Teresa
"Merit consists in the virtue of love alone, flavored with the light of true discretion without which the soul is worth nothing."
--St. Catherine of Siena
"There is no place for selfishness—and no place for fear! Do not be afraid, then, when love makes demands. Do not be afraid when love requires sacrifice"
--Pope John Paul II
"We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become. If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing. Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation. This means we are to become vessels of God´s compassionate love for others. "
--St. Clare of Assisi
"We can cure physical diseases with medicine but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more who are dying for a little love. Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So spread love everywhere you go."
--Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta
"Love is the most necessary of all virtues. Love in the person who preaches the word of God is like fire in a musket. If a person were to throw a bullet with his hands, he would hardly make a dent in anything; but if the person takes the same bullet and ignites some gunpowder behind it, it can kill. It is much the same with the word of God. If it is spoken by someone who is filled with the fire of charity- the fire of love of God and neighbor- it will work wonders."
--St. Anthony Mary Claret (from his autobiography).
"Intense love does not measure . . . it just gives."
-- Blessed Mother Teresa
"The person who does not decide to love forever will find it very difficult to really love for even one day."
--Pope John Paul II
"Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This is why Christ the Redeemer 'fully reveals man to himself.'"
--Pope John Paul II
"Real love is demanding. I would fail in my mission if I did not tell you so. Love demands a personal commitment to the will of God."
--Pope John Paul II
“Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.”
--St Augustine
“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.”
--St Augustine
It is not so essential to think much as to love much.
--St Teresa of Jesus, OCD
To be taken with love for a soul, God does not look on its greatness, but the greatness of its humility.
--St John of the Cross, OCD
Always remember to love your neighbor; always prefer the one who tries your patience, who test your virtue, because with her you can always merit: suffering is Love; the Law is Love.
--Bl Mary of Jesus Crucified "The Little Arab"
A soul enkindled with love is a gentle, meek, humble, and patient soul.
--St John of the Cross, OCD
You know that our Lord does not look at the greatness or difficulty of our action, but at the love with which you do it. What, then, have you to fear?
--St Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, OCD
So dearly does His Majesty love us that He will reward our love for our neighbor by increasing the love which we bear to Himself, and that in a thousand ways.
--St Teresa of Jesus, OCD
What we need most in order to make progress is to be silent before this great God with our appetite and with our tongue, for the language he best hears is silent love.
--St John of the Cross, OCD
Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.
--Saint Thomas Aquinas
'My Jesus, fill my heart with so much love that one day it will break just to be with you. My Jesus, you know I have placed you as a seal on my heart. Remain there always.'
--St. Bernadette Soubirous
"He alone loves the Creator perfectly
who manifests a pure love for his neighbor."
--St. Bede the Venerable
Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger or higher or wider; nothing is more pleasant, nothing fuller, and nothing better in heaven or on earth, for love is born of God and cannot rest except in God, Who is above all created things.
--Imitation of Christ
Love is watchful. Sleeping, it does not slumber. Wearied, it is not tired. Pressed, it is not straitened. Alarmed, it is not confused, but like a living flame, a burning torch, it forces its way upward and passes unharmed through every obstacle.
--Imitation of Christ
You know well enough that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them.
--Saint Therese of Lisieux
"Lord, grant that I might not so much seek to be loved as to love."
--St Francis of Assisi
Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they enkindle and melt the soul.
--Saint Teresa
As for what concerns our relations with our fellow men, the anguish in our neighbor's soul must break all precept. All that we do is a means to an end, but love is an end in itself, because God is love.
--Edith Stein