Top 500 Henri J.M. Nouwen Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “There is nothing so important in the family as the sacred quality of the meal.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

252. “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

253. “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

254. “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

255. “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

256. “Those who do not run away from our pains but touch them with compassion bring healing and new strength. The paradox indeed is that the beginning of healing is in the solidarity with the pain. In.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

257. “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

258. “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

259. “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

260. “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

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

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

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262. “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 J.M. Nouwen

263. “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

264. “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

265. “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

266. “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

267. “The word listen in Latin is audire. If we listen with full attention in which we are totally geared to listen, it’s called ob-audire, and that’s where the word obedience comes from. Jesus is the obedient one. That means he is total ear, totally open to the love of God. And if we are closed, and to the degree that we are closed, we are surdus. That is the Latin word for deaf. The more “deaf” we get, the more absurdus.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

268. “We have to keep asking ourselves: ‘What does it all mean? What is God trying to tell us? How are we called to live in the midst of all this?’ Without such questions our lives become numb and flat.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

269. “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

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

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

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271. “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

272. “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

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

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

274. “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

275. “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

276. “The parable that Rembrandt painted might well be called “The Parable of the Lost Sons.” Not only did the younger son, who left home to look for freedom and happiness in a distant country, get lost, but the one who stayed home also became a lost man. Exteriorly he did all the things a good son is supposed to do, but, interiorly, he wandered away from his father. He did his duty, worked hard every day, and fulfilled all his obligations but became increasingly unhappy and unfree.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

277. “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

278. “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

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

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

280. “Be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

281. “I want my work to create space where people can meet God, rather than give them something they can “apply” to their daily life.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

282. “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

283. “I am learning that the best cure for hypocrisy is community. Hypocrisy is not so much the result of not living what I preach but much more of not confessing my inability to fully live up to my own words.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

284. “God does not love the younger son more than the elder. In the story the father goes out to the elder son just as he did to the younger, urges him to come in, and says, “My son, you are with me always, and all I have is yours.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

285. “Your community needs you, but maybe not as a constant presence. Your community might need you as a presence that offers courage and spiritual food for the journey, a presence that creates the safe ground in which others can grow and develop, a presence that belongs to the matrix of the community. But your community also needs your creative absence.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

286. “Your life is not going to be easy, and it should not be easy. It ought to be hard. It ought to be radical; it ought to be restless; it ought to lead you to places you’d rather not go.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

287. “When God looks at our world, God must weep. God must weep because the lust for power has entrapped and corrupted the human spirit. In the news and even in our families and ourselves we see that instead of gratitude there is resentment, instead of forgiveness there is revenge, instead of healing there is wounding, instead of compassion there is competition, instead of cooperation there is violence, and instead of love there is immense fear.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

288. “It is in this solitude that we discover that being is more important than having, and that we are worth more than the result of our efforts.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

289. “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 J.M. Nouwen

290. “I always try to turn my personal struggles into something helpful for others.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

291. “As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

292. “I am constantly surprised at how I keep taking the gifts God has given me – my health, my intellectual and emotional gifts – and keep using them to impress people, receive affirmation and praise, and compete for rewards, instead of developing them for the glory of God.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

293. “Waiting patiently is suffering through the present moment, tasting it to the fullest in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

294. “To be bored, therefore, does not mean that we have nothing to do, but that we question the value of the things we are so busy doing. The great paradox of our time is that many of us are busy and bored at the same time.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

295. “There are two extremes to avoid: being completely absorbed in your pain and being distracted by so many things that you stay far away from the wound you want to heal.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

296. “One of the most satisfying aspects of writing is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

297. “Spiritual reading, therefore, is slow, deliberate, meditative reading in which we allow the words to penetrate our heart and question our spirit.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

298. “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

299. “We must ask ourselves how many times others would benefit more from our silence than from our words.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

300. “Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

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