Jean Vanier CC GOQ was a Canadian Catholic philosopher and theologian. In 1964, he founded L’Arche, an international federation of communities spread over 37 countries for people with developmental disabilities and those who assist them. Profoundly inspirational Jean Vanier quotes will brighten up your day and make you feel ready to take on anything.
If you’re searching for quotes from greatest philosophers that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of famous John Ruskin quotes, top Meister Eckhart quotes and greatest Rudolf Steiner quotes.
Famous Jean Vanier Quotes
To be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefore, unloveable. Jean Vanier
I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes. Jean Vanier
We are not called by God to do extraordinary things, but to do ordinary things with extraordinary love. Jean Vanier
Many people are good at talking about what they are doing, but in fact do little. Others do a lot but don’t talk about it they are the ones who make a community live. Jean Vanier
To love someone is to show to them their beauty, their worth and their importance. Jean Vanier
One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn’t as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them find self confidence and inner healing. Jean Vanier
Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness. Jean Vanier
Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don’t need a lot of money to be happy in fact, the opposite. Jean Vanier
I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes. Jean Vanier
Love doesn’t mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness. Jean Vanier
No wonder some people who are desperately lonely lose themselves in mental illness or violence to forget the inner pain. Jean Vanier
A community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new hope, like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets. Community is only being created when they have recognized that the greatness of man is to accept his insignificance, his human condition and his earth, and to thank God for having put in a finite body the seeds of eternity which are visible in small and daily gestures of love and forgiveness. The beauty of man is in this fidelity to the wonder of each day. Jean Vanier
If we are to grow in love, the prisons of our egoism must be unlocked. This implies suffering, constant effort, and repeated choices. Jean Vanier
If we are to grow in love, the prisons of our egoism must be unlocked. This implies suffering, constant effort and repeated choices. Jean Vanier
The heart of L’Arche is to say to people, ‘I am glad you exist. And the proof we are glad that they exist is that we stay with them for a long time. I am glad you exist’ is translated into a physical presence. Jean Vanier.
When people love each other, they are content with very little. When we have light and joy in our hearts, we don’t need material wealth. The most loving communities are often the poorest. If our own life is luxurious and wasteful, we can’t approach poor people. If we love people, we want to identify with them and share with them. Jean Vanier
Peace cannot be imposed by politicians or Churches. Peace has to grow within each person if it is to endure. Our society can only be healed when each person in it is healed. Jean Vanier
A Christian community should do as Jesus did propose and not impose. Its attraction must lie in the radiance cast by the love of brothers. Jean Vanier
Peace is the fruit of love, a love that is also justice. But to grow in love requires work hard work. And it can bring the pain because it implies loss loss of the certitudes, comforts, and hurts that shelter and define us. Jean Vanier
Jesus is the starving, the parched, the prisoner, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the dying. Jesus is the oppressed, the poor. To live with Jesus is to live with the poor. To live with the poor is to live with Jesus. Jean Vanier
Love doesn’t mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness. Jean Vanier
All of us have a secret desire to be seen as saints, heroes, martyrs. We are afraid to be children, to be ourselves. Jean Vanier
If our own life is luxurious and wasteful, we can’t approach poor people. If we love people, we want to identify with them and share with them. Jean Vanier
We have to remind ourselves constantly that we are not saviours. We are simply a tiny sign, among thousands of others, that love is possible, that the world is not condemned to a struggle between oppressors and oppressed, that class and racial warfare is not inevitable. Jean Vanier
When people love each other, they are content with very little. When we have light and joy in our hearts, we don’t need material wealth. Jean Vanier.
People cannot accept their own evil if they do not at the same time feel loved, respected and trusted. Jean Vanier
The most loving communities are often the poorest. Jean Vanier
It is only when we stand up, with all our failings and sufferings, and try to support others rather than withdraw into ourselves, that we can fully live the life of community. Jean Vanier
Community is not an ideal; it is people. It is you and I. In the community, we are called to love people just as they are with their wounds and their gifts, not as we want them to be. Jean Vanier
Every human activity can be put at the service of the divine and of love. We should all exercise our gift to build community. Jean Vanier
Each person is sacred, no matter what his or her culture, religion, handicap, or fragility. Jean Vanier
A community that is growing rich and seeks only to defend its goods and its reputation is dying. It has ceased to grow in love. A community is alive when it is poor and its members feel they have to work together and remain united, if only to ensure that they can all eat tomorrow. Jean Vanier
Each person is created in God’s image; each one has a heart, a capacity to love and to be loved. Jean Vanier
The response to war is to live like brothers and sisters. The response to injustice is to share. The response to despair is a limitless trust and hope. The response to prejudice and hatred is forgiveness. To work for community is to work for humanity. To work for peace is to work for a true political solution it is to work for the Kingdom of God. It is to work to enable every one to live and taste the secret joys of the human person united to the eternal. Jean Vanier
One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn’t as individuals. Jean Vanier
A growing community must integrate three elements: a life of silent prayer, a life of service and above all of listening to the poor, and a community life through which all its members can grow in their own gift. Jean Vanier
Each human being, however small or weak, has something to bring to humanity. Jean Vanier
The poor are always prophetic. As true prophets always point out, they reveal God’s design. That is why we should take time to listen to them. And that means staying near them, because they speak quietly and infrequently they are afraid to speak out, they lack confidence in themselves because they have been broken and oppressed. But if we listen to them, they will bring us back to the essential. Jean Vanier
All of us have a secret desire to be seen as saints, heroes, martyrs. We are afraid to be children, to be ourselves. Jean Vanier
Individualistic material progress and the desire to gain prestige by coming out on top have taken over from the sense of fellowship, compassion and community. Now people live more or less on their own in a small house, jealously guarding their goods and planning to acquire more, with a notice on the gate that says, ‘Beware of the Dog. Jean Vanier
A Christian community should do as Jesus did: propose and not impose. Its attraction must lie in the radiance cast by the love of brothers. Jean Vanier
At the heart of the celebration, there are the poor. If [they] are excluded, it is not longer a celebration. A celebration must always be a festival of the poor. Jean Vanier
Life is a succession of crises and moments when we have to rediscover who we are and what we really want. Jean Vanier
We discover that we are at the same time very insignificant and very important, because each of our actions is preparing the humanity of tomorrow; it is a tiny contribution to the construction of the huge and glorious final humanity. Jean Vanier
When we begin to live full time with others, we discover our poverty and our weakness, our inability to get on with people, our mental and emotional blocks. Jean Vanier
The cry for love and communion and for recognition that rises from the hearts of people in need reveals the fountain of love in us and our capacity to give life. At the same time, it can reveal our hardness of heart and are fears. Their cry is so demanding, and we are frequently seduced by wealth, power and the values of our societies. We want to climb the ladder of human promotion; we want to be recognized for our efficiency, power and virtue. The cry of the poor is threatening to the rich person within us.We are sometimes prepared to give money and a little time, but we are frightened to give our hearts, to enter into a personal relationship of love and communion with them. For if we do so, we shall have to die to all our selfishness and to all the hardness of our heart. Jean Vanier
To invite others to live with us is a sign that we aren’t afraid, that we have a treasure of truth and of peace to share. Jean Vanier
If people in a community live only on the level of the human, rational, legalistic and active aspects and symbols of their faith which give cohesion, security and unity there is a serious risk of their closing in on themselves and of gradually dying. If, however, their religious faith opens up, on the one hand to the mystical that is, to an experience of the love of God present in the community and in the heart of each person and, on the other hand, to what unifies all human beings, especially the poor, the vulnerable and the oppressed, they will then continue to grow in openness. Jean Vanier
When we begin to believe that there is greater joy in working with and for others, rather than just for ourselves, then our society will truly become a place of celebration. Jean Vanier
Individual growth towards love and wisdom is slow. A community’s growth is even slower. Members of a community have to be friends of time. They have to learn that many things will resolve themselves if they are given enough time. It can be a great mistake to want, in the name of clarity and truth, to push things too quickly to a resolution. Some people enjoy confrontation and highlighting divisions. This is not always healthy. It is better to be a friend of time. But clearly too, people should not pretend that problems don’t exist by refusing to listen to the rumblings of discontent they must be aware of the tensions and then learn to work on them at the right moment. Jean Vanier
The strong need the weak as much as the weak need the strong. Jean Vanier
When we judge, we are pushing people away; we are creating a wall, a barrier. When we forgive we are destroying barriers, we come closer to others. Jean Vanier
