Top 500 Henri J.M. Nouwen Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

Featured in: Meaningful Quotes, Motivational Quotes About Life, Opportunity Quotes, Choices Quotes, Spirituality Quotes

2. “Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

3. “Community is where humility and glory touch.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

Featured in: Humility Quotes

4. “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 J.M. Nouwen

Featured in: Inspirational Quotes for Women, Self-Worth Quotes, Identity Quotes, Faith Quotes, Grace Quotes

5. “Community means that people come together around the table, not just to feed their bodies, but to feed their minds and their relationships.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

6. “What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

Featured in: Love Quotes, Empathy Quotes, Human Nature Quotes, Humanism Quotes, Love Is Quotes

7. “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 J.M. Nouwen

Featured in: Discipline Quotes, Christian Quotes, Blessing Quotes, Soul Quotes, Gratitude Quotes

8. “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.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

9. “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 J.M. Nouwen

Featured in: Life is Hard Quotes

10. “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 J.M. Nouwen

11. “You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

12. “Prayer is first of all listening to God. It’s openness. God is always speaking; he’s always doing something.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

Featured in: Firsts Quotes, Quotes About Listening

13. “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 J.M. Nouwen

Featured in: Empathy Quotes

14. “Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

15. “When we learn to move through suffering, rather than avoid it, then we greet it differently. We become willing to let it teach us. We even begin to see how God can use it for some larger end.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

16. “Jesus invites us to abide in his love. That means to dwell with all that I am in him. It is an invitation to a total belonging, to full intimacy, to an unlimited being-with. The light of the Spirit reveals to us that love conquers all fear.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

Featured in: Christian Motivational Quotes, You Are Loved Quotes, Unconditional Love Quotes, True Love Quotes, Book Quotes About Love

17. “Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

18. “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.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

19. “A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

Featured in: Patience Quotes

20. “Pay attention to the people God puts in your path if you want to discern what God is up to in your life.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

21. “Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

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

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

23. “In true love the smallest distance is too great, and the greatest distance can be bridged.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

Featured in: Love Life Quotes, True Love Quotes, Soulmate Quotes, I Love You Quotes

24. “I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

Featured in: Unconditional Love Quotes

25. “God, help me to see others not as enemies or as ungodly but rather as thirsty people. And give me the courage and compassion to offer your Living Water, which alone quenches deep thirst.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

26. “Waiting time is not wasting time. Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

27. “Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

28. “The best of community does give one a deep sense of belonging and well-being; and in that sense community takes away loneliness.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

29. “Prayer is the center of the Christian life. It is the only necessary thing. It is living with God in the here and now.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

30. “Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

31. “Active waiting means present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

32. “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 because I miss you I remind myself how lucky I am to have someone so special to miss.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

Featured in: Distance Quotes

33. “In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

34. “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 J.M. Nouwen

35. “Prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

36. “The farther the outward journey takes you, the deeper the inward journey must be.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

37. “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 persistent efforts into a garden of solitude.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

38. “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 their lives in their own hearts.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

39. “Fundraising is a very rich and beautiful activity. It is a confident, joyful and hope-filled expression of ministry. In ministering to each other, each from the riches that he or she possesses, we work together for the full coming of God’s Kingdom.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

40. “Hope means to keep living amid desperation and to keep humming in the darkness.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

41. “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 J.M. Nouwen

42. “Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little flower that shows its beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

43. “When we give generously, with an abundance mentality, what we give away will multiply.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

44. “The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

45. “When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

46. “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.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

47. “It is God’s passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

48. “The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

49. “Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

50. “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 J.M. Nouwen