Not All Of Us Can Do

The official Missionaries of Charity website (motherteresa.org) lists this as a false attribution. An almost identical sentiment — "In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love" — also appears on that list. The saying may be a paraphrase of a documented Teresa belief: she repeatedly emphasized focus on the individual over the collective, telling interviewers "I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can love only one person at a time." That authenticated sentiment is likely the origin of the popular paraphrase.