Daily Inspiration Quote by Saint Teresa of Avila

Courage is framed here not as a heroic accessory but as the single skill that makes every other virtue usable. Saint Teresa of Avila compresses an entire program of spiritual life into a blunt piece of triage: you cannot control what comes, only whether you meet it with steadiness. The line’s power is its refusal to bargain with fate. “Whatever comes” wipes out the comforting categories (good, bad, deserved, random) and replaces them with a more demanding question: will you be governed by fear, or by commitment?

Teresa writes from inside risk, not theory. As a Carmelite reformer in 16th-century Spain, she pushed against institutional inertia, suspicion of women’s authority, and the watchful atmosphere of the Counter-Reformation. Mysticism could attract admiration, but it could also attract accusation. In that context, “courage” is practical: founding convents, navigating clerical politics, persisting through illness, and sustaining a disciplined inner life when the culture around you reads female intensity as danger.

The subtext is also psychological. Teresa knows the mind’s favorite sabotage: delay. If you wait for certainty, permission, perfect health, or perfect holiness, you never move. Courage becomes the hinge between contemplation and action, prayer and reform, conviction and follow-through.

“Everything lies in that” is the rhetorical clincher: an absolutist ending that sounds almost severe, like a spiritual CEO cutting the org chart down to one indispensable role. It works because it’s both consoling and unsparing. You don’t need to predict the future; you need the nerve to live it.