Top 500 Henri J.M. Nouwen Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so ‘in-between’ things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

302. “I witness many signs of hope. I don’t have to wait until all is well, but I can celebrate every little hint of the Kingdom that is at hand.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

303. “Your true identity is as a child of God. This is the identity you have to accept. Once you have claimed it and settled in it, you can live in a world that gives you much joy as well as pain. You can receive the praise as well as the blame that comes to you as an opportunity for strengthening your basic identity, because the identity that makes you free is anchored beyond all human praise and blame. You belong to God, and it is as a child of God that you are sent into the world.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

304. “Exhaustion, burnout, and depression are not signs that you are doing God’s will. God is gentle and loving. God desires to give you a deep sense of safety in God’s love. Once you have allowed yourself to experience that love fully, you will be better able to discern who you are being sent to in God’s name.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

305. “Just as words lose their power when they are not born out of silence, so openness loses its meaning when there is no ability to be closed.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

306. “People with handicaps teach me that being is more important than doing, the heart is more important than the mind, and caring together is better than caring alone.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

307. “In their poverty, the mentally handicapped reveal God to us and hold us close to the gospel.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

308. “When you can look into the face of another human being and you have enough light in you to recognize your brother or you sister. Until then it is night, and darkness is still with us.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

309. “It is freeing to become aware that we do not have to be victims of our past and can learn new ways of responding. Forgiveness is love practiced among people who love poorly. It sets us free without wanting anything in return.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

310. “We are called to witness, always with our lives and sometimes with our words, to the great things God has done for us.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

311. “When we are spiritually deaf, we are not aware that anything important is happening in our lives. We keep running away from the present moment, and we try to create experiences that make our lives worthwhile. So we fill up our time to avoid the emptiness we otherwise would feel.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

312. “Our salvation comes from something small, tender, and vulnerable, something hardly noticeable. The Lord, who is the creator of the universe, comes to us in smallness, weakness, and hiddenness.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

313. “To live in the present, we must deeply believe that what is most important is in the here and now.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

314. “Your way of being present to your community may require times of absence, prayer, writing, or solitude. These too are times for your community.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

315. “Solitude is the place where we can connect with profound bonds that are deeper than the emergency bonds of fear and anger.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

316. “The great teachers are always those who can live the tension. They are not criticizing everybody, they’re not complaining. They give young people a vision.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

317. “The elder brother compares himself with the younger one and becomes jealous. But the father loves them both so much that it didn’t even occur to him to delay the party in order to prevent the elder son from feeling rejected. I am convinced that many of my emotional problems would melt as snow in the sun if I could let the truth of God’s motherly non-comparing love permeate my heart.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

318. “The main question is “Do you own your pain?” As long as you do not own your pain – that is, integrate your pain into your way of being in the world – the danger exists that you will use the other to seek healing for yourself. When you speak to others about your pain without fully owning it, you expect something from them that they cannot give. As a result, you will feel frustrated, and those you wanted to help will feel confused, disappointed, or even further burdened.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

319. “Let’s not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

320. “Without trust, I cannot let myself be found. Trust is that deep inner conviction that the Father wants me home. As long as I doubt that I am worth finding and put myself down as less loved than my younger brothers and sisters, I cannot be found. I have to keep saying to myself, “God is looking for you. He will go anywhere to find you. He loves you, he wants you home, he cannot rest unless he has you with him.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

321. “Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to a fertile soil for more joy.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

322. “To console does not mean to take away the pain but rather to be there and say, “You are not alone, I am with you. Together.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

323. “Every time you close another door – be it the door of immediate satisfaction, the door of distracting entertainment, the door of busyness, the door of guilt and worry, or the door of self-rejection – you commit yourself to go deeper into your heart and thus deeper into the heart of God.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

324. “The tragedy of our lives is that, while we suffer from the wounds afflicted on us by those who love us, we cannot avoid wounding those we want to love.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

325. “What once seemed such a curse has become a blessing. All the agony that threatened to destroy my life now seems like the fertile ground for greater trust, stronger hope, and deeper love.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

326. “I have also learned to catch the darkness early, not to allow sadness to grow into depression or let a sense of being rejected develop into a feeling of abandonment. Even in the renewed and deepened friendship, I feel the freedom to point to the little clouds and ask for help in letting them pass by.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

327. “The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation...”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

328. “Life in the Spirit of Jesus is therefore a life in which Jesus’ coming into the world – his incarnation, his death, and resurrection – is lived out by those who have entered into the same obedient relationship to the Father which marked Jesus’ own life. Having become sons and daughters as Jesus was Son, our lives become a continuation of Jesus’ mission.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

329. “Hiddenness is the place of purification. In hiddenness we find our true selves.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

330. “The Bible is primarily a book not of information but of formation, not merely a book to be analyzed, scrutinized, and discussed but a sacred book to nurture us, to unify our hearts and minds, and to serve as a constant source of contemplation.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

331. “The fruits of your labors may be reaped two generations from now. Trust, even when you don’t see the results.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

332. “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

333. “Becoming a child is living toward a second innocence: not the innocence of the newborn infant, but the innocence that is reached through conscious choices.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

334. “Emit gratitude as though it was done.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

335. “The resistance to praying is like the resistance of tightly clenched fists. This image shows a tension, a desire to cling tightly to yourself, a greediness which betrays fear.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

336. “You can only seek God when you have already found God. The desire for God’s unconditional love is the fruit of having been touched by that love.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

337. “The art of living is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

338. “Yes, there is that voice, the voice that speaks from above and from within and that whispers softly or declares loudly: “You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests.” It certainly is not easy to hear that voice in a world filled with voices that shout: You are no good, you are ugly; you are worthless; you are despicable, you are nobody – unless you can demonstrate the opposite.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

339. “The man who can articulate the movements of his inner life need no longer be a victim of himself, but is able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

340. “The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

341. “I have found over and over again how hard it is to be truly faithful to Jesus when I am alone.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

342. “Spiritual greatness has nothing to do with being greater than others. It has everything to do with being as great as each of us can be. True sanctity is precisely drinking our own cup and trusting that by thus fully claiming our own, irreplaceable journey, we can become a source of hope for many.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

343. “As long as we have our stories there is hope.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

344. “To care for others requires an ever-increasing acceptance.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

345. “The more we touch the intimate love of God which creates, sustains, and guides us, the more we recognize the multitude of fruits that come forth from that love.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

346. “When we approach fundraising in a spirit of gratitude, our confidence in our mission does not depend on how the person we are with responds to our request! We are free to remain secure in God’s love with our hearts set joyfully on the kingdom.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

347. “In our production-oriented society, being busy, having an occupation, has become one of the main ways, if not the main way, of identifying ourselves. Without an occupation, not just our economic security but our very identity is endangered.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

348. “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

349. “Although I am a committed Catholic priest, and nowhere hide that fact, my focus is very much a spiritual journey.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

350. “What is forgotten cannot be healed, and that which cannot be healed easily becomes the cause of greater evil.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen