QuoteProject
The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty—it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.
Mother Teresa
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote highlights the dual nature of poverty in the West, emphasizing emotional and spiritual deficiencies alongside material lack.

Mother Teresa's quote addresses the complex nature of poverty, suggesting that in the Western world, it transcends mere financial hardship. It encompasses emotional isolation and a deep spiritual void, implying that people often suffer from loneliness and a longing for love and divine connection, reflecting a lack of fulfillment that material wealth cannot resolve.

Themes

PovertyLoveSpiritualityLonelinessHunger

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech addressing community mental health, one might use this quote to illustrate the unseen dimensions of poverty.

More from Mother Teresa

The way to plan the family is natural family planning not contraception. In destroying the power of giving life, through contraception, a husband or wife is doing something to self, and so it destroys the gift of life in him or her
Mother TeresaRead
I believe in person to person; every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is only one person in the world for me at that moment.
Mother TeresaRead
Purity is the fruit of prayer.
Mother TeresaRead
If your Eyes are Positive, You will Love the World. _x000D_ But if Your Tongue is Positive, The World will Love you.
Mother TeresaRead
The poor are great! The poor are wonderful! The poor are very generous! They give us much more than what we give them.
Mother TeresaRead
The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
Mother TeresaRead

Similar quotes

I am not interested in the past. I am interested in the future, for that is where I expect to spend the rest of my life.
Charles KetteringRead
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.
Oscar WildeRead
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
Thomas PaineRead
Adventures come to the adventurous, and mysterious things fall in the way of those who, with wonder and imagination, are on the watch for them; but the majority of people go past the doors that are half ajar, thinking them closed, and fail to notice the faint stirrings of the great curtain that hangs ever in the form of appearances between them and the world of causes behind.
Algernon BlackwoodRead
The skull regarded Ralph like one who knows all the answers and won't tell.
William GoldingRead
Anger and hatred are the real enemies that we must confront and defeat, not the 'enemies' who appear from time to time in our lives.
Dalai LamaRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.