Quote by Teresa of Ávila: “Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. All things pass.”

This is a discipline, not a comfort. You are being instructed to train your mind not to be shaken — by loss, fear, or uncertainty — because nothing in life is permanent, including your troubles. The steadiness comes from practice, not from circumstances improving.

Teresa of Ávila wrote during one of the most religiously turbulent centuries in European history, when the Protestant Reformation was fragmenting Christianity and the Spanish Inquisition operated with broad powers. Her spiritual writing offered internal freedom as an alternative to the volatile external world.

Spanish Carmelite nun, mystic, and reformer who founded the Discalced Carmelites and wrote foundational texts of Christian mysticism, including The Interior Castle and The Way of Perfection. She was the first woman declared a Doctor of the Catholic Church, in 1970.