Henri Nouwen Quotes

Solitude is the place of purification and transformation, the place of the great struggle and the great encounter.

It is very hard to stay in touch with our true identity because those who want our money, our time, and our energy profit more from our insecurity and fears than from our inner freedom.

We have to trust that our stories deserve to be told. We may discover that the better we tell our stories the better we will want to live them.

Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible.

Through discipline, discipline is the other side of discipleship. If you want to follow Jesus, you have to have discipline.

That is our vocation: to convert the enemy into a guest and to create the free and fearless space where brotherhood and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced.

Precisely where I feel my poverty is where I discover God's blessing.

Our tendency is to run from the painful realities or try to change them as soon as possible. But cure without care makes us into rulers, controllers, manipulators.

[The Return of the Prodigal book] came out of my emotional and spiritual journey during the four months I was gone from Daybreak because of depression.

If you want to know anything about community, you have to realize that the contemplative side is essential. Community without retreating and quiet time never survives.

Community always calls us back to solitude, and solitude always calls us to community. Community and solitude, both, are essential elements of ministry and witnessing.

People who pray stand receptive before the world. They no longer grab but caress, they no longer bite but kiss, they no longer examine but admire.

It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we all are called.

If fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend.

The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised.

Solitude is the furnace of transformation.

If you meet God in solitude, you discover the God you meet is the God who embraces all people.

Do not hesitate to love and to love deeply.

As a general remark, I would say we must move from the moral to the mystical life.

This sounds very simple and maybe even trite, but very few people know that they are loved without condition or limits.

The crisis of our prayer life is that our minds may be filled with ideas of God while our hearts remain far from him.

In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that life is not a creation of our will but rather an obedient response to the reality of our being united.

The third discipline is community. Whom do you choose as your companions? Whom do you choose to be friends with, to live with? Are they people who love you, and care for you, and nurture you?

It is precisely in times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God.

The great teachers are always those who can live the tension. They are not criticizing everybody, they're not complaining. They give young people a vision.

To be baptized means to make the passage with the people of Israel and with Jesus from slavery to freedom and from death to new life. It is a commitment to a life in and through Jesus.

Community is where humility and glory touch.

When I could no longer cling to my normal supports I discovered that true support and real safety lie far beyond the structures of our world.

If you are not able to be silent, you will not be able to speak well.

Television is obviously an enormous intruder. Quite often people say they have no time, but in fact they waste a lot of time on things that are not healthy.

As long as we have our stories there is hope.

For me the university has always been an ideal context for spiritual formation. I always felt that if you want to offer spiritual formation at the university, you can.

Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going?-are not questions with an answer but questions that open us up to new questions which lead us deeper into the unshakeable mystery of existence.

The university has become a place that prepares you for the fights in the world.

Your heart is greater than your wounds.

I trust in you, Lord, but keep helping me in my moments of distrust and doubt.

We must ask ourselves how many times others would benefit more from our silence than from our words.

The spiritual life is a reaching out to our innermost self, to our fellow human and to our God.

The friend who cares makes it clear that whatever happens in the external world, being present to each other is what really matters. In fact, it matters more than pain, illness, or even death.

When we have sold our identity to the judges of this world, we are bound to become restless, because of a growing need for affirmation and praise.

That's the temptation of the devil: "Turn stones into bread! Be relevant!"

'How much longer will I live?'... Only one thing seems clear to me. Every day should be well-lived. What a simple truth! Still, it is worthy of my attention.

What once seemed such a curse has become a blessing. All the agony that threatened to destroy my life now seems like the fertile ground for greater trust, stronger hope, and deeper love.

A happy life is a life for others.

I had a deep experience of God's love for me.

Someday I would love to write about Vincent van Gogh - his paintings and letters continue to inspire me very much. But it remains hard to find the time and inner rest to write.

That's prayer to let God's Word speak deep within you and tell you, "You are my beloved. You don't have to take an eye for an eye. No, no you're too rich for that."

One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there.

To learn patience is not to rebel against every hardship.

Intimacy is not a happy medium. It is a way of being in which the tension between distance and closeness is dissolved and a new horizon appears. Intimacy is beyond fear.