Top 500 Henri J.M. Nouwen Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “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

252. “You are a Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in, so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo, and keep saying that a new world is yet to come.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

253. “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

254. “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

255. “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

256. “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

257. “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

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

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

259. “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

260. “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

261. “Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbor is really our fellow man.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

262. “If God is compassionate, then certainly those who love God should be compassionate as well.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

263. “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

264. “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

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

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

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

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

267. “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

268. “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

269. “God wants you to live for others and to live that presence well.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

270. “Building a vocation on the expectations of concrete results, however conceived, is like building a house on sand instead of on solid rock, and even takes away the ability to accept successes as free gifts.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

271. “People we meet, some great in the eyes of the world and some almost invisible to the larger society, are often conduits of God’s wisdom.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

272. “A happy life is a life for others.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

273. “God is the father who watches and waits for his children, runs out to meet them, embraces them, pleads with them, begs and urges them to come home.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

274. “Prayer, which is breathing with the Spirit of Jesus, leads us to this immense knowledge.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

275. “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

276. “God’s compassion is described by Jesus not simply to show me how willing God is to feel for me, or to forgive me my sins and offer me new life and happiness, but to invite me to become like God and to show the same compassion to others as he is showing to me.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

277. “Jesus promises a life in which we increasingly have to stretch out our hands and be led into places where we would rather not go.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

278. “Writing is not just a job. It helps me to pray. It’s a way of being.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

279. “The main problem of service is to be the way without being “in the way.” And if there are any tools, techniques and skills to be learned they are primarily to plow the field, to cut the weeds and to clip the branches, that is, to take away the obstacles for real growth and development.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

280. “Jesus wants to make it clear that the God of whom he speaks is a God of compassion who joyously welcomes repentant sinners into his house.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

281. “I am convinced that healing is often so difficult because we don’t want to know the pain.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

282. “Community as discipline is the effort to create a free and empty space among people where together we can practice true obedience.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

283. “We may have only a few talents, but we have many gifts. Our gifts are the many ways in which we express our humanity. They are part of who we are: friendship, kindness, patience, joy, peace, forgiveness, gentleness, love, hope, trust and many others. These are the true gifts we have to offer to each other.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

284. “No one person can fulfill all your needs. But the community can truly hold you. The community can let you experience the fact that, beyond your anguish, there are human hands that hold you and show you God’s faithful love.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

285. “Remember, you are held safe. You are loved. You are protected. You are in communion with God and with those whom God has sent you. What is of God will last. It belongs to the eternal life. Choose it, and it will be yours.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

286. “The real mystery of marriage is not that husband and wife love each other so much that they can recognize God in each other’s lives, but more because God loves them so much that they can discover each other more and more as living reminder’s of God’s presence.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

287. “Our lives are unique stones in the mosaic of human existence – priceless and irreplaceable.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

288. “In the face of the oppressed I recognize my own face, and in the hands of the oppressor I recognize my own hands. Their flesh is my flesh, their blood is my blood, their pain is my pain, their smile is my smile.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

289. “I’ve had a tremendous problem with depression in my life. I’d rather not talk about it, because it’s over. But depression is real.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

290. “The world is waiting for new saints, ecstatic men and women who are so deeply rooted in the love of God that they are free to imagine a new international order.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

291. “The world says, “When you were young you were dependent and could not go where you wanted, but when you grow old you will be able to make your own decisions, go your own way, and control your own destiny.” But Jesus has a different vision of maturity: It is the ability and willingness to be led where you would rather not go.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

292. “As long as we relate to the trees, the rivers, the mountains, the fields and the oceans as properties which we can manipulate according to our real or fabricated needs, nature remains opaque, and does not reveal to us its true being.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

293. “Life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

294. “The difference between rich and poor is not that the rich sin is more than the poor, that the rich find it easier to call sin a virtue.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

295. “The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there. Our lives are filled with examples which tell us that leadership asks for understanding and that understanding requires sharing.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

296. “We seem to have a fear of empty spaces. The philosopher Spinoza called this a horror vacui. We want to fill up what is empty. Our lives stay very full. And when we are not blinded by busyness, we fill our inner space with guilt about things of the past or worries about things to come.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

297. “Jesus didn’t say, ‘Blessed are those who care for the poor.’ He said, ‘Blessed are we where we are poor, where we are broken.’ It is there that God loves us deeply and pulls us into deeper communion with himself.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

298. “Good families always ritualize the table. You can say, “This is a Christmas meal; this is a birthday meal.””

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

299. “Who can listen to a story of loneliness and despair without taking the risk of experiencing similar pains in his own heart and even losing his precious peace of mind? In short: “Who can take away suffering without entering it?”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

300. “The joy that compassion brings is one of the best-kept secrets of humanity. It is a secret known only to a very few people, a secret that has to be rediscovered over and over again.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen