Someone said to me a few years ago: “We don’t choose our favorite saints; they choose us.”  I feel just that way about St. Thérèse of Lisieux.  She’s been a good friend for a long time.  I’ll let her speak for herself:

Perfection seems easy to reach.  I realize that it is sufficient to recognize one’s own nothingness and to abandon oneself as a child in the arms of God. (LT 226)

The poorer you are the more Jesus will love you.  He will go far, very far, in search of you, if at times you wander off a little.  (LT 211)

Keep in mind the method used to make copper objects shine.  You smear them all over with mud, with things that make them dirty and dull; after this operation, they will shine again like gold.   Okay!  Temptations are like this mud for the soul: they serve for nothing less than to make the virtues which are opposed to these same temptations to shine forth.  (CRM 51)

Love knows how to draw profit from everything: from the good and from the bad that is found in us. (LT 142)

O, Mary, if I were Queen of Heaven, and you were Thérèse, I would wish to be Thérèse so that you could be Queen of Heaven.

More quotes from St. Thérèse can be found here.