Top 500 Henri J.M. Nouwen Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her vulnerable self... to enter into a deeper solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success and bring the light of Jesus there.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

202. “The question is not: How many people take you seriously? How much are you going to accomplish? Can you show some results? but: Are you in love with Jesus?”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

203. “Drinking the cup of life is fully appropriating and internalizing our own unique existence, with all its sorrows and joys. It is not easy to do this. For a long time we might not feel capable of accepting our own life; we might keep fighting for a better or at least a different life.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

204. “Your unique presence in your community is the way God wants you to be present to others. Different people have different ways of being present. You have to know and claim your way. That is why discernment is so important. Once you have an inner knowledge of your true vocation, you have a point of orientation. That will help you decide what to do and what to let go of, what to say and what to remain silent about, when to go out and when to stay home, who to be with and who to avoid.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

205. “When we face death with hope, we can live life with generosity.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

206. “I am less likely to deny my suffering when I learn how God uses it to mold me and draw me closer to him. I will be less likely to see my pains as interruptions to my plans and more able to see them as the means for God to make me ready to receive him. I let Christ live near my hurts and distractions.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

207. “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 J.M. Nouwen

208. “The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

209. “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 J.M. Nouwen

210. “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.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

211. “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 J.M. Nouwen

212. “There is within you a lamb and a lion. Spiritual maturity is the ability to let lamb and lion lie down together.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

213. “Let’s dare to enter into an intimate relationship with God without fear, trusting that we will receive love and always more love.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

214. “Because where God wants you to be, God holds you safe and gives you peace, even when there is pain.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

215. “There is nothing so important in the family as the sacred quality of the meal.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

216. “It is not easy to enter into the silence and reach beyond the many boisterous and demanding voices of our world and to discover there the small intimate voice saying: ‘You are my Belived Child, on you my favor rests.’”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

217. “Unlike a fairy tale, the parable provides no happy ending. Instead, it leaves us face to face with one of life’s hardest spiritual choices: to trust or not to trust in God’s all-forgiving love.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

218. “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 J.M. Nouwen

219. “While my friend always spoke about the sun, I kept speaking about the clouds, until one day I realized that it was the sun that allowed me to see the clouds.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

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

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

221. “I know that the fact that I am always searching for God, always struggling to discover the fullness of Love, always yearning for the complete truth, tells me that I have already been given a taste of God, of Love and of Truth. I can only look for something that I have, to some degree, already found. How can I search for beauty and truth unless that beauty and truth are already known to me in the depth of my heart?”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

222. “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.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

223. “To give someone a blessing is the most significant affirmation we can offer.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

224. “The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

225. “Both trust and gratitude require the courage to take risks because distrust and resentment, in their need to keep their claim on me, keep warning me how dangerous it is to let go of my careful calculations and guarded predictions.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

226. “I now see that the hands that forgive, console, heal, and offer a festive meal must become my own.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

227. “I wonder if the greatest temptation is self-rejection. Could it be that beneath all the lures to greed, lust, and success rests a great fear of never being enough or not being lovable?”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

228. “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 J.M. Nouwen

229. “When you get exhausted, frustrated, overwhelmed, or run down, your body is saying that you are doing things that are none of your business. God does not require of you what is beyond your ability, what leads you away from God, or what makes you depressed or sad.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

230. “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 J.M. Nouwen

231. “The real question is: how can I live so that my death will be fruitful for others?”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

232. “Silence is a very concrete, practical, and useful discipline in all our ministerial tasks. It can be seen as a portable cell taken with us from the solitary place into the midst of our ministry. Silence is solitude practiced in action.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

233. “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.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

234. “To become like the Father whose only authority is compassion, I have to shed countless tears and so prepare my heart to receive anyone, whatever their journey has been, and forgive them from that heart.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

235. “You feel overwhelmed by distractions, fantasies, the disturbing desire to throw yourself into the world of pleasure. But you know already that you will not find there an answer to your deepest question. Nor does the answer lie in rehashing old events, or in guilt or shame. All of that makes you dissipate yourself and leave the rock on which your house is built.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

236. “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.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

237. “Our first responsibility in the midst of violence is to prevent it from destroying us.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

238. “Ministry means the ongoing attempt to put one’s own search for God, with all the moments of pain and joy, despair and hope, at the disposal of those who want to join this search but do not know how.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

239. “When I look through God’s eyes at my lost self and discover God’s joy at my coming home, then my life may become less anguished and more trusting.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

240. “By prayer, community is created as well as expressed.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

241. “Thus, discipline is the creation of boundaries that keep time and space open for God. Solitude requires discipline, worship requires discipline, caring for others requires discipline. They all ask us to set apart a time and a place where God’s gracious presence can be acknowledged and responded to.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

242. “Yes, it’s a competitive world, but where is your heart?”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

243. “I can choose to grateful when I am criticized, even when my heart still responds in bitterness. I can choose to speak about goodness and beauty, even when my inner eye still looks for someone to accuse or something to call ugly.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

244. “Community has little to do with mutual compatibility. Similarities in educational background, psychological make-up, or social status can bring us together, but they can never be the basis for community. Community is grounded in God, who calls us together, and not in the attractiveness of people to each other. There.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

245. “Which questions guide our lives? Which questions do we make our own? Which questions deserve our undivided and full personal commitment? Finding the right questions is crucial to finding the answers.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

246. “Community thus is obedience practiced together. The question is not simply, “Where does God lead me as an individual person who tries to do his will?” More basic and more significant is the question, “Where does God lead us as a people?” This.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

247. “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 J.M. Nouwen

248. “In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

249. “I can only be healed from above, from where God reaches down. What is impossible for me is possible for God. “With God, everything is possible.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

250. “Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: “These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God’s eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting embrace.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen