Our greatest fulfillment lies in giving ourselves to others.
HENRI NOUWENLife is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say, “I love you, too.”
More Henri Nouwen Quotes
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Keep a space where God can let something totally new take place.
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The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
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Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved.
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Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next.
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If you feel loved, you can do a thousand things. If you feel rejected, everything becomes a problem.
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We need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.
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Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.
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You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.
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I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.
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Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little flower that shows its beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.
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We are all healers who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.
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For Jesus, there are no countries to be conquered, no ideologies to be imposed, no people to be dominated. There are only children, women and men to be loved.
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I feel strongly that the God we meet in solitude is always the God who calls us to community.
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Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.
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The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.
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Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God’s eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God’s heart.
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Dare to love and to be a real friend. The love you give and receive is a reality that will lead you closer and closer to God as well as those whom God has given you to love.
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What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.
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You have to listen to the one who calls you beloved. That has to be affirmed over and over again. That is prayer – listening to the voice of the one who calls you “the beloved.”
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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.
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Your heart is greater than your wounds.
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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.
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Waiting time is not wasting time. Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.
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Forgiveness changes the way we remember.
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Every time I take a step in the direction of generosity, I know I am moving from fear to love.
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Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.
HENRI NOUWEN