"More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones"
About this Quote
The line lands like a dare to anyone who treats faith as a cosmic vending machine: put in devotion, receive the outcome, walk away satisfied. Teresa flips that bargain. She’s pointing at the unsettling fact that getting what you beg for can be the moment you discover you asked for the wrong thing - or asked for the right thing for the wrong reasons.
The subtext is almost surgical: desire is not wisdom. Answered prayers expose the hidden clauses in our hopes. A healed relationship may reopen old patterns; a longed-for child brings fear and exhaustion alongside joy; a promotion arrives with moral compromise, loneliness, or the terrifying realization that ambition doesn’t cure the self. Unanswered prayers preserve the fantasy. Answered ones force contact with reality and consequence.
Teresa’s context matters. As a Carmelite reformer in Counter-Reformation Spain, she lived inside a spirituality that prized purification: God’s love as a refining fire, not a comfort blanket. Her writing often frames suffering not as a glitch in the system but as part of the system’s purpose - the stripping away of attachments that masquerade as holiness. This aphorism works because it’s both pastoral and ruthless. It consoles those who feel ignored by God while warning the devout not to confuse divine will with personal preference.
It also smuggles in a modern psychological insight: we’re frequently devastated not by loss, but by the collapse of our own narratives when life finally complies.
The subtext is almost surgical: desire is not wisdom. Answered prayers expose the hidden clauses in our hopes. A healed relationship may reopen old patterns; a longed-for child brings fear and exhaustion alongside joy; a promotion arrives with moral compromise, loneliness, or the terrifying realization that ambition doesn’t cure the self. Unanswered prayers preserve the fantasy. Answered ones force contact with reality and consequence.
Teresa’s context matters. As a Carmelite reformer in Counter-Reformation Spain, she lived inside a spirituality that prized purification: God’s love as a refining fire, not a comfort blanket. Her writing often frames suffering not as a glitch in the system but as part of the system’s purpose - the stripping away of attachments that masquerade as holiness. This aphorism works because it’s both pastoral and ruthless. It consoles those who feel ignored by God while warning the devout not to confuse divine will with personal preference.
It also smuggles in a modern psychological insight: we’re frequently devastated not by loss, but by the collapse of our own narratives when life finally complies.
Quote Details
| Topic | Prayer |
|---|---|
| Source | Attributed to St. Teresa of Ávila (Teresa of Jesus, 1515–1582): commonly quoted as "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones." See Wikiquote entry for Teresa of Ávila. |
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