Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen was a Dutch Catholic priest, professor, writer and theologian. His interests were rooted primarily in psychology, pastoral ministry, spirituality, social justice and community. Inspirational Henri Nouwen quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.
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Most Famous Henri Nouwen Quotes
The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection. – Henri Nouwen
The world is evil only when you become its slave. – Henri Nouwen
Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone’s face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love?’ These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will be many fruits, here in this world and the life to come. – Henri Nouwen
Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human. – Henri Nouwen
When we say to people, ‘I will pray for you,’ we make a very important commitment. The sad thing is that this remark often remains nothing but a well-meant expression of concern. But when we learn to descend with our mind into our heart, then all those who have become part of our lives are led into the healing presence of God and touched by him in the center of our being. We are speaking here about a mystery for which words are inadequate. It is the mystery that the heart, which is the center of our being, is transformed by God into his own heart, a heart large enough to embrace the entire universe. Through prayer we can carry in our heart all human pain and sorrow, all conflicts and agonies, all torture and war, all hunger, loneliness, and misery, not because of some great psychological or emotional capacity, but because God’s heart has become one with ours. – Henri Nouwen
Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not, ‘How can we hide our wounds?’ so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but ‘How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?’ When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers. – Henri Nouwen
We are called to be fruitful – not successful, not productive, not accomplished. Success comes from strength, stress, and human effort. Fruitfulness comes from vulnerability and the admission of our own weakness. – Henri Nouwen
The more I think about the human suffering in our world and my desire to offer a healing response, the more I realize how crucial it is not to allow myself to become paralyzed by feelings of helplessness and guilt. More important than ever is to be very faithful to my vocation to do well the few things I am called to do and hold on to the joy and peace they bring me. I must resist the temptation to let the forces of darkness pull me into despair and make me one more of their many victims. – Henri Nouwen
The main question is not, how can we hide our wounds…but how can we put our woundedness in service to others. – Henri Nouwen
Do not despair, thinking that you cannot change yourself after so many years. Simply enter into the presence of Jesus as you are and ask him to give you a fearless heart where he can be with you. You cannot make yourself different. Jesus came to give you a new heart, a new spirit, a new mind, and a new body. Let him transform you by his love and so enable you to receive his affection in your whole being. – Henri Nouwen
However, community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another. Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own. The question, therefore, is not ‘How can we make community?’ but, ‘How can we develop and nurture giving hearts?’ – Henri Nouwen
You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking. – Henri Nouwen
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 than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking. – Henri Nouwen
We seldom realize fully that we are sent to fulfill God-given tasks. We act as if we were simply dropped down in creation and have to decide to entertain ourselves until we die. But we were sent into the world by God, just as Jesus was. Once we start living our lives with that conviction, we will soon know what we were sent to do. – Henri Nouwen
The more you have loved and have allowed yourself to suffer because of your love, the more you will be able to let your heart grow wider and deeper. When your love is truly giving and receiving, those whom you love will not leave your heart even when they depart from you. The pain of rejection, absence, and death can become fruitful. Yes, as you love deeply the ground of your heart will be broken more and more, but you will rejoice in the abundance of the fruit it will bear. – Henri Nouwen
Jesus.. says, ‘Let go of your complaints, forgive those who loved you poorly, step over your feelings of being rejected, and have the courage to trust that you won’t fall into an abyss of nothingness but into the safe embrace of a God whose love will heal all your wounds. – Henri Nouwen
Compassion- which means, literally, to suffer with- is the way to the truth that we are most ourselves, not when we differ from others, but when we are the same. Indeed the main spiritual question is not, What difference do you make?butWhat do you have in common?It is notexcellingbutservingthat makes us most human. It is not proving ourselves to be better than others but confessing to be just like others that is the way to healing and reconciliation. – Henri Nouwen
Jesus’ whole life and mission involve accepting powerlessness and revealing in this powerlessness the limitlessness of God’s love. Here we see what compassion means. It is not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position; it is not a reaching out from on high to those who are less fortunate below; it is not a gesture of sympathy or pity for those who fail to make it in the upward pull. On the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there. – Henri Nouwen
For as long as you can remember, you have been a pleaser, depending on others to give you an identity. You need not look at that only in a negative way. You wanted to give your heart to others, and you did so quickly and easily. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you. You must stop being a pleaser and reclaim your identity as a free self. – Henri Nouwen
Where is peace to be found? The answer is surprising but clear. In weakness. Why there? Because in our weakness, our familiar ways of controlling and manipulating our world are being stripped away, and we are forced to let go from doing much, thinking much, and relying on our self-sufficiency. Right there where we are most vulnerable, the peace that is not of this world is mysteriously hidden. – Henri Nouwen
Dare to love and to be a real friend. The love you give and receive is a reality that will lead you closer and closer to God as well as those whom God has given you to love. – Henri Nouwen
Keep a space where God can let something totally new take place. – Henri Nouwen
Community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another. – Henri Nouwen
When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become. – Henri Nouwen
You have to dare to live through the pain and struggle. Acknowledge your anguish but do not let it pull you out of yourself. Hold on to your chosen direction, your discipline, your prayer, your work, your guides, and trust that one day love will have conquered enough of you that even the most fearful part will allow love to cast out all fear. – Henri Nouwen
Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let’s not be afraid to receive each day’s surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity. – Henri Nouwen
Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. – Henri Nouwen
A friend is more than a therapist or confessor, even though a friend can sometimes heal us and offer us God’s forgiveness. A friend is that other person with whom we can share our solitude, our silence, and our prayer. A friend is that other person with whom we can look at a tree and say,Isn’t that beautiful,or sit on the beach and silently watch the sun disappear under the horizon. With a friend we don’t have to say or do something special. With a friend we can be still and know that God is there with both of us. – Henri Nouwen
Henri Nouwen Quotes on Hope, Love, Gratitude and Friendship
In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others. – Henri Nouwen
Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it. – Henri Nouwen
When I trust deeply that today God is truly with me and holds me safe in a divine embrace, guiding every one of my steps I can let go of my anxious need to know how tomorrow will look, or what will happen next month or next year. I can be fully where I am and pay attention to the many signs of God’s love within me and around me. – Henri Nouwen
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. – Henri Nouwen
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 knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us. – Henri Nouwen
This is what life is about. It is being sent on a trip by a loving God, who is waiting at home for our return and is eager to watch the slides we took and hear about the friends we made. When we travel with the eyes and ears of the God who sent us, we will see wonderful sights, hear wonderful sounds, meet wonderful people … and be happy to return home. – Henri Nouwen
Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human. – Henri Nouwen
Pay attention to the people God puts in your path if you want to discern what God is up to in your life. – Henri Nouwen
Hope is willing to leave unanswered questions unanswered and unknown futures unknown. Hope makes you see God’s guiding hand not only in the gentle and pleasant moments but also in the shadows of disappointment and darkness. – Henri Nouwen
Friendship is one of the greatest gifts a human being can receive. It is a bond beyond common goals, common interests, or common histories. It is a bond stronger than sexual union can create, deeper than a shared fate can solidify, and even more intimate than the bonds of marriage or community. Friendship is being with the other in joy and sorrow, even when we cannot increase the joy or decrease the sorrow. It is a unity of souls that gives nobility and sincerity to love. Friendship makes all of life shine brightly. – Henri Nouwen
It is in solitude that we discover that being is more important than having and that we are worth more than the results of our efforts. In solitude we discover that our life is not a possession to be defended but a gift to be shared. – Henri Nouwen
What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love. – Henri Nouwen
In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds. – Henri Nouwen
For Jesus, there are no countries to be conquered, no ideologies to be imposed, no people to be dominated. There are only children, women and men to be loved. – Henri Nouwen
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. – Henri Nouwen
Distance never separates two hearts that really care, for our memories span the miles and in seconds we are there. But whenever I start feeling sad cuz I miss you I remind myself how lucky I am to have someone so special to miss. – Henri Nouwen
To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, welcome, to accept. – Henri Nouwen
But what I would like to say is that the spiritual life is a life in which you gradually learn to listen to a voice that says something else, that says,You are the beloved and on you my favour rests…. I want you to hear that voice. It is not a very loud voice because it is an intimate voice. It comes from a very deep place. It is soft and gentle. I want you to gradually hear that voice. We both have to hear that voice and to claim for ourselves that that voice speaks the truth, our truth. It tells us who we are. – Henri Nouwen
The more I think about the human suffering in our world and my desire to offer a healing response, the more I realize how crucial it is not to allow myself to become paralyzed by feelings of helplessness and guilt. More important than ever is to be very faithful to my vocation to do well the few things I am called to do and hold on to the joy and peace they bring me. I must resist the temptation to let the forces of darkness pull me into despair and make me one more of their many victims. – Henri Nouwen
The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there. – Henri Nouwen
Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone’s face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love?’ These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will be many fruits, here in this world and the life to come. – Henri Nouwen
Jesus has to be and become ever more the center of my life. It is not enough that Jesus is my teacher, my guide, my source of inspiration. It is not even enough that he is my companion on they journey, my friend and my brother. Jesus must become the heart of my heart, the fire of my life, the love of my soul, the bridegroom of my spirit. He must become my only thought, my only concern, my only desire. – Henri Nouwen
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 knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us. – Henri Nouwen
Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking our words more seriously and discovering their true selves. – Henri Nouwen
The only feelings that do not heal are the ones you hide. – Henri Nouwen
Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved. – Henri Nouwen
Compassion- which means, literally, “to suffer with”- is the way to the truth that we are most ourselves, not when we differ from others, but when we are the same. Indeed the main spiritual question is not, “What difference do you make?” but “What do you have in common?” It is not “excelling” but “serving” that makes us most human. It is not proving ourselves to be better than others but confessing to be just like others that is the way to healing and reconciliation. – Henri Nouwen
Our life is full of brokenness – broken relationships, broken promises, broken expectations. How can we live with that brokenness without becoming bitter and resentful except by returning again and again to God’s faithful presence in our lives. – Henri Nouwen
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 of who she was for us, and the more intimately we experience what her love meant for us. Real, deep love is, as you know, very unobtrusive, seemingly easy and obvious, and so present that we take it for granted. Therefore, it is only in retrospect – or better, in memory – that we fully realize its power and depth. Yes, indeed, love often makes itself visible in pain. – Henri Nouwen
Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient, we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later, and somewhere else. Let’s be patient and trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand. – Henri Nouwen
My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work. – Henri Nouwen
The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing… not healing, not curing… that is a friend who cares. – Henri Nouwen
When we have nothing to cling to as our own and cease thinking of ourselves as people who must defend privileges, we can open ourselves freely to others with the faithful expectation that our strength will manifest itself in our shared weakness. – Henri Nouwen
To learn patience is not to rebel against every hardship. – Henri Nouwen
Jesus has to be and become ever more the center of my life. It is not enough that Jesus is my teacher, my guide, my source of inspiration. It is not even enough that he is my companion on they journey, my friend, and my brother. Jesus must become the heart of my heart, the fire of my life, the love of my soul, the bridegroom of my spirit. He must become my only thought, my only concern, my only desire. – Henri Nouwen
Solitude is very different from a ‘time-out’ from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other. – Henri Nouwen
The real enemies of our life are the ‘oughts’ and the ‘ifs.’ They pull us backward into the unalterable past and forward into the unpredictable future. But real life takes place in the here and now. – Henri Nouwen
Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure. – Henri Nouwen
One of the most beautiful ways for spiritual formation to take place is to let your insecurity lead you closer to the Lord. Natural hypersensitivity can become an asset; it makes you aware of your need to be with people and it allows you to be more willing to look at their needs. – Henri Nouwen
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. – Henri Nouwen
People with handicaps teach me that being is more important than doing, the heart is more important than the mind, and caring together is better than caring alone. – Henri Nouwen
Our inclination is to show our Lord only what we feel comfortable with. But the more we dare to reveal our whole trembling self to him, the more we will be able to sense that his love, which is perfect love, casts out all our fears. – Henri Nouwen
The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised. – Henri Nouwen
The fruits of your labors may be reaped two generations from now. Trust, even when you don’t see the results. – Henri Nouwen
To give someone a blessing is the most significant affirmation we can offer. – Henri Nouwen
Just as people can watch spellbound a circus artist tumbling through the air in a phosphorized costume, so they can listen to a preacher who uses the Word of God to draw attention to himself. But a sensational preacher stimulates the senses and leaves the spirit untouched. Instead of being the way to God, his ‘being different’ gets in the way. – Henri Nouwen
The Christian leaders of the future have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God and are trained – through prayer, study, and careful analysis – to manifest the divine event of God’s saving work in the midst of the many seemingly random events of their time. – Henri Nouwen
Perhaps nothing helps us make the movement from our little selves to a larger world than remembering God in gratitude. Such a perspective puts God in view in all of life, not just in the moments we set aside for worship or spiritual disciplines. Not just in the moments when life seems easy. – Henri Nouwen
A life without a lonely place, that is, without a quiet center, becomes destructive. – Henri Nouwen
God is a God of the present. God is always in the moment, be that moment hard or easy, joyful and painful. – Henri Nouwen
Ministers are powerless people who have nothing to boast of except their weaknesses. But when the Lord whom they serve fills them with His blessing they will move mountains and change the hearts of people wherever they go. – Henri Nouwen
Peacemaking is a full-time vocation that includes each member of God’s people. – Henri Nouwen
Ministry is the least important thing. You cannot not minister if you are in communion with God and live in community. – Henri Nouwen
Our glory is hidden in our pain, if we allow God to bring the gift of himself in our experience of it. – Henri Nouwen
If fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend. – Henri Nouwen
The spiritual life is not a life before, after, or beyond our everyday existence. No, the spiritual life can only be real when it is lived in the midst of the pains and joys of the here and now. – Henri Nouwen
Spiritual identity means we are not what we do or what people say about us. And we are not what we have. We are the beloved daughters and sons of God. – Henri Nouwen
Jesus didn’t say, ‘Blessed are those who care for the poor.’ He said, ‘Blessed are we where we are poor, where we are broken.’ It is there that God loves us deeply and pulls us into deeper communion with himself. – Henri Nouwen
One of the main tasks of theology is to find words that do not divide but unite, that do not create conflict but unity, that do not hurt but heal. – Henri Nouwen
Friendship has always belonged to the core of my spiritual journey. – Henri Nouwen
Waiting is a period of learning. The longer we wait, the more we hear about him for whom we are waiting. – Henri Nouwen
Our efforts to disconnect ourselves from our own suffering end up disconnecting our suffering from God’s suffering for us. The way out of our loss and hurt is in and through. – Henri Nouwen
Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God. – Henri Nouwen
Fear is the great enemy of intimacy. Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other but does not create true intimacy. – Henri Nouwen
The evangelical movement has become just a bit victimized by a success-oriented culture, wanting the church – like the corporation – to be successful. – Henri Nouwen
‘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. – Henri Nouwen
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. – Henri Nouwen
Prayer is the beginning and the end, the source and the fruit, the core and the content, the basis and the goal of all peacemaking. – Henri Nouwen
Solitude is the place where we can connect with profound bonds that are deeper than the emergency bonds of fear and anger. – Henri Nouwen
When you recognize the festive and the still moments as moments of prayer, then you gradually realize that to pray is to live. – Henri Nouwen
I’ve had a tremendous problem with depression in my life. I’d rather not talk about it, because it’s over. But depression is real. – Henri Nouwen
To be a Christian who is willing to travel with Christ on his downward road requires being willing to detach oneself constantly from any need to be relevant, and to trust ever more deeply the Word of God. – Henri Nouwen
In our production-oriented society, being busy, having an occupation, has become one of the main ways, if not the main way, of identifying ourselves. Without an occupation, not just our economic security but our very identity is endangered. – Henri Nouwen
Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared. – Henri Nouwen
Asking people for money is giving them the opportunity to put their resources at the disposal of the Kingdom. – Henri Nouwen
God wants you to live for others and to live that presence well. – Henri Nouwen
Living in a community with very wounded people, I came to see that I had lived most of my life as a tightrope artist trying to walk on a high, thin cable from one tower to the other, always waiting for the applause when I had not fallen off and broken my leg. – Henri Nouwen
The resistance to praying is like the resistance of tightly clenched fists. This image shows a tension, a desire to cling tightly to yourself, a greediness which betrays fear. – Henri Nouwen
Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you’re not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn’t planned or counted on. – Henri Nouwen
Our first responsibility in the midst of violence is to prevent it from destroying us. – Henri Nouwen
The man who can articulate the movements of his inner life need no longer be a victim of himself, but is able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering. – Henri Nouwen
As peacemakers, we must resist all the powers of war and destruction and proclaim that peace is the divine gift offered to all who affirm life. Resistance means saying ‘No’ to all the forces of death, wherever they may be. – Henri Nouwen
In their poverty, the mentally handicapped reveal God to us and hold us close to the gospel. – Henri Nouwen
Too many of us are lonely ministers practicing a lonely ministry. – Henri Nouwen
Most Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love. – Henri Nouwen
Our Western society is showing its technological muscles in ever more threatening ways, but the experience of fear, anxiety and even despair has increased in equal proportion. Indeed, the paradox is that the powerful giants feel as powerless as a new-born babe. – Henri Nouwen
To be a minister means above all to become powerless, or in more precise terms, to speak with our powerlessness to the condition of powerlessness which is so keenly felt but so seldom expressed by the people of our age. – Henri Nouwen
The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy. – Henri Nouwen
I have an increasing sense that the most important crisis of our time is spiritual and that we need places where people can grow stronger in the spirit and be able to integrate the emotional struggles in their spiritual journeys. – Henri Nouwen
Every time there are losses there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper – Henri Nouwen
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 repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body’s deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body’s superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity. – Henri Nouwen
If you start with community and want to be faithful to community, you have to realize that what binds you together is not mutual compatibility or common tasks, but God. In order to stay in touch with that call to community, we always have to return to solitude. – Henri Nouwen
In community, where you have all the affection you could ever dream of, you feel that there is a place where even community cannot reach. That’s a very important experience. In that loneliness, which is like a dark night of the soul, you learn that God is greater than community. – Henri Nouwen
It is precisely when you are loved a lot that you might realize a second loneliness which is not to be solved but lived. This second loneliness is an existential loneliness that belongs to the basis of our being. It’s where we are unfulfilled because only God can fill us. – Henri Nouwen
I am very grateful that I am in touch with so many different church groups. I am always very moved by the fact that so many people – practically over the spectrum of the Christian world – are responding to my writing. – Henri Nouwen
Obviously a child can never conceive solitude if his parents aren’t living it somewhere themselves. I don’t mean that to be alone you have to get down on your knees for an hour in a yoga posture. – Henri Nouwen
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. – Henri Nouwen
It is not that the university as such is against spiritual formation. It is just that often the university does not know how to integrate spiritual formation within its academic disciplines. – Henri Nouwen
Good families always ritualize the table. You can say,This is a Christmas meal; this is a birthday meal. – Henri Nouwen
I have always felt that if I am very personal and connected with what I myself am living, my writing will transcend ecclesial boundaries. – Henri Nouwen
Although I am a committed Catholic priest, and nowhere hide that fact, my focus is very much a spiritual journey. – Henri Nouwen
Solitude, community, and ministry are certainly not just for celibates! Celibates also have a hard time keeping up. – Henri Nouwen
The people who most affected me were the ones who got right in there with me, who cried with me, but who also had a certain authority, who dared to say what needed saying. – Henri Nouwen
I still believe that the university is a place where people can develop their minds and learn skills, but also, they can develop their personalities and their spiritual life. – Henri Nouwen
I really believe that what we finally want is to know God, as God has come to be known through Jesus. Knowledge is knowledge of the heart – the Spirit – I would say. It is the Spirit in us who reveals God. – Henri Nouwen
Writing is not just a job. It helps me to pray. It’s a way of being. – Henri Nouwen
A sense of solitude is one of the most beautiful things that parents can give a child. It doesn’t mean leaving the child alone, but it does mean creating safe spaces where the child can be with other people. It does mean directing their attention to God. – Henri Nouwen
Solitude is an essential element for the spiritual health of a child. If we only stimulate our children – keep them busy with endless stories with no space to be alone – that’s not good. – Henri Nouwen
The university has become a place that prepares you for the fights in the world. – Henri Nouwen
Life is not entertainment. Life is not distraction. – Henri Nouwen
Be sure that you make a difference in the world. – Henri Nouwen
If I were to let my life be taken over by what is urgent, I might very well never get around to what is essential. – Henri Nouwen
The Church is the body of Christ fashioned by baptism & the Eucharist. – Henri Nouwen
To live in the present, we must deeply believe that what is most important is in the here and now. – Henri Nouwen
People who read your ideas tend to think that your writings reflect your life. – Henri Nouwen
Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour. – Henri Nouwen
solitude begins with a time and a place for God, and God alone. If we really believe not only that God exists but also that God is actively present in our lives– healing, teaching and guiding– we need to set aside a time and space to give God our undivided attention. (Matt 6:6) – Henri Nouwen
Any dance of celebration must weave both the sorrows and the blessings into a joyful step….To heal is to let the Holy Spirit call me to dance, to believe again, even amid my pain, that God will orchestrate and guide my life. – Henri Nouwen
The mystery of one man is too immense and too profound to be explained by another man. – Henri Nouwen
As long as we have our stories there is hope. – Henri Nouwen
The beginning and the end of all Christian leadership is to give your life for others. – Henri Nouwen
The Lord is coming, always coming. When you have ears to hear and eyes to see, you will recognize him at any moment of your life. Life is Advent; life is recognizing the coming of the Lord – Henri Nouwen
God doesn’t give us just enough. God gives us more than enough: more bread and fish than we can eat, more love than we dared to ask for. – Henri Nouwen
Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be. (Finding My Way Home) – Henri Nouwen
