Top 500 Henri J.M. Nouwen Quotes (2024 Update)
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451. “The great movement of the spiritual life is from a deaf, nonhearing life to a life of listening.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

452. “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.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

453. “I am beginning to experience that an unconditional, total love of God makes a very articulate, alert, and attentive love for the neighbor possible.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

454. “It is as if we have been wandering in a foreign land looking for peace and purpose in our lives and a true sense of who we are. Jesus stands in our midst and beckons us home so that we can be restored to our true selves.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

455. “The deep truth is that our human suffering need not be an obstacle to the joy and peace we so desire, but can become, instead, the means to it. The great secret of the spiritual life, the life of the Beloved Sons and Daughters of God, is that everything we live, be it gladness or sadness, joy or pain, health or illness, can all be part of the journey toward the full realisation of our humanity.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

456. “People who read your ideas tend to think that your writings reflect your life.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

457. “I am a good person, known and cherished by the One who brought me to my existence. Before I was hurt, I was a beloved.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

458. “Meditation means to let the word descend from our minds into our hearts and thus to become enfleshed.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

459. “The younger son’s return takes place in the very moment that he reclaims his sonship, even though he has lost all the dignity that belongs to it. In fact, it was the loss of everything that brought him to the bottom line of his identity. He hit the bedrock of his sonship. In retrospect, it seems that the prodigal had to lose everything to come into touch with the ground of his being.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

460. “Have courage” therefore means “Let your center speak.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

461. “God should be sought, but we cannot find God. We can only be found by him.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

462. “I reached a healthy place in which I was able to stop projecting my needs on another human being. We both came to understand that each of us is limited in our capacity to be for another what is needed, and learned to forgive each other for not being God.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

463. “A complainer is hard to live with, and very few people know how to respond to the complaints made by a self-rejecting person. The tragedy is that, often, the complaint, once expressed, leads to that which is most feared: further rejection.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

464. “There are many elder sons and elder daughters who are lost while still at home.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

465. “Doctors, lawyers, and psychologists study to become qualified professionals who are paid to know what to do. A well-trained theologian or minister is only able to point out the universal tendency to narrow God down to our own little conceptions and expectations, and to call for an open mind and heart for God to be revealed.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

466. “Drinking our cup is not simply adapting ourselves to a bad situation and trying to use it as well as we can. Drinking our cup is a hopeful, courageous, and self-confident way of living. It is standing in the world with head erect, solidly rooted in the knowledge of who we are, facing the reality that surrounds us and responding to it from our hearts.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

467. “If the urge to be entertained so much, to travel so much, to buy so much, and to arm ourselves so much no longer motivated our behavior, could our society as it is today still function?”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

468. “Our clinging to the opinions of others reveals how superficial we are. We have little to stand on. We have to be kept alive by adulation and praise. Those who are deeply rooted in the love of God can enjoy human praise without being attached to it.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

469. “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 J.M. Nouwen

470. “Action with and for those who suffer is the concrete expression of the compassionate life and the final criterion of being a Christian.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

471. “A true disciple of Jesus will always go to where people are feeling weak, broken, sick, in pain, poor, lonely, forgotten, anxious, and lost.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

472. “Through compassion it is possible to recognize that the craving for love that people feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses. Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends’ eyes and our hatred in their bitter mouths. When they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they give life, we know that we can do the same. For a compassionate person nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

473. “Our individual as well as communal lives are so deeply molded by our worries about tomorrow that today hardly can be experienced.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

474. “Love is not based on the willingness to listen, to understand problems of others, or to tolerate their otherness. Love is based on the mutuality of the confession of our total self to each other.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

475. “When we worry, we have our hearts in the wrong place.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

476. “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 J.M. Nouwen

477. “When we think about the people who have given us hope and have increased the strength of our soul, we might discover that they were not the advice givers, warners or moralists, but the few who were able to articulate in words and actions the human condition in which we participate and who encouraged us to face the realities of life.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

478. “As the Father, I have to dare to carry the responsibility of a spiritually adult person and dare to trust that the real joy and real fulfillment can only come from welcoming home those who have been hurt and wounded on their life’s journey, and loving them with a love that neither asks nor expects anything in return.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

479. “When the younger son was no longer considered a human being by the people around him, he felt the profundity of his isolation, the deepest loneliness one can experience. He was truly lost, and it was this complete lostness that brought him to his senses.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

480. “Prayer for others, therefore, cannot be seen as an extraordinary exercise that must be practiced from time to time. Rather, it is the very beat of the compassionate heart.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

481. “Compassion is the fruit of solitude and the basis of all ministry.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

482. “It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

483. “The core of all prayer is indeed listening, obediently standing in the presence of God.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

484. “Where does my complete flowering as a human being connect with the needs of the world?”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

485. “We all are children and parents, students and teachers, healers and in need of care.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

486. “We probably will never be free from all our hostilities, and there even may be days and weeks in which our hostile feelings dominate our emotional life to such a degree that the best thing we can do is to keep distance, speak little to others and not write letters, except to ourselves.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

487. “Marriage is not that two people love each other so much that they can find God in each other, but that God loves them so much that they can discover each other as living reminders of God’s presence.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

488. “Boredom, resentment, and depression are all sentiments of disconnectedness. They present life to us as a broken connection. They give us a sense of not-belonging. In interpersonal relations, this disconnectedness is experienced as loneliness. When we are lonely we perceive ourselves as isolated individuals surrounded, perhaps, by many people, but not really part of any supporting or nurturing community.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

489. “However, 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. It’s so easy to spend your whole time being preoccupied with urgent matters and never starting to live, really live.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

490. “I asked him how he had been able to take such a splendid picture. With a smile he said, “Well, I had only to be very patient and very attentive. It was only after a few hours of compliments that the lily was willing to let me take her picture.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

491. “From that heart come the words, “Do you love me?” Knowing the heart of Jesus and loving him are the same thing. The knowledge of Jesus’ heart is a knowledge of the heart.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

492. “We will never believe that we have anything to give unless there is someone who is able to receive.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

493. “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 J.M. Nouwen

494. “But our task is the opposite of distraction. Our task is to help people concentrate on the real but often hidden event of God’s active presence in their lives. Hence, the question that must guide all organizing activity in a parish is not how to keep people busy, but how to keep them from being so busy that they can no longer hear the voice of God who speaks in silence.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

495. “What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

496. “A large part of the father’s life had been spent waiting. He could not force his younger son to come home or his older son to let go of his resentments. Only they themselves could take the initiative to return.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

497. “I leave you with the image of the leader with outstretched hands, who chooses a life of downward mobility. It is the image of the praying leader, the vulnerable leader, and the trusting leader. May that image fill your hearts with hope, courage, and confidence as you anticipate the new century.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

498. “It is through the way of the cross that Jesus gives glory to God, receives glory from God, and makes God’s glory known to us. The glory of the resurrection can never be separated from the glory of the cross. The risen Lord always shows us his wounds.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

499. “Thirdly, you have to celebrate your chosenness constantly. This means saying ‘thank you’ to God for having chosen you, and ‘thank you’ to all who remind you of your chosenness. Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are not an ‘accident’, but a divine choice.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

500. “The more we come to depend on the images offered to us by those who try to distract us, entertain us, use us for their purposes, and make us conform to the demands of a consumer society, the easier it is for us to lose our identity.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen