Henri Nouwen Quotes

347 quotes in 3982 categories

• Those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. LOVE is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger…
• Why is it important that you are with God and God alone on the mountain top? It's important because it's the place in which you…
• All the great spiritual leaders in history were people of hope. Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Mary, Jesus, Rumi, Gandhi, and Dorothy Day all lived with a…
• Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. It is a choice based on the…
• In true love the smallest distance is too great, and the greatest distance can be bridged.
• A life without a lonely place, that is, a life without a quiet center, easily becomes destructive. When we cling to the results of our…
• Life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared.
• Real grief is not healed by time... if time does anything, it deepens our grief. The longer we live, the more fully we become aware…
• When everything is dark, when we are surrounded by despairing voices, when we do not see any exits, then we can find salvation in a…
• ...When you can look into the face of human beings and you have enough light to recognize them as your brothers and sisters. Up until…
• Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or…
• To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of loneliness and to change it by gentle and…
• If you feel a great loneliness and a deep longing for human contact, you have to be extremely discerning...and ask yourself whether this situation is…
• The joy that compassion brings is one of the best-kept secrets of humanity. It is a secret known only to a very few people, a…
• Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt…
• True Hospitality is welcoming the stranger on her own terms. This kind of hospitality can only be offered by those who've found the center of…
• The dance of life finds its beginnings in grief......Here a completely new way of living is revealed. It is the way in which pain can…
• Your life is not going to be easy, and it should not be easy. It ought to be hard. It ought to be radical; it…
• In this crazy world, there's an enormous distinction between good times and bad, between sorrow and joy. But in the eyes of God, they're never…
• Without Pentecost the Christ-event - the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus - remains imprisoned in history as something to remember, think about and reflect…

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