Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.
HENRI NOUWENIf I were to let my life be taken over by what is urgent, I might very well never get around to what is essential.
More Henri Nouwen Quotes
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Forgiveness changes the way we remember.
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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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The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
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Our greatest fulfillment lies in giving ourselves to others.
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Every time there are losses, there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper.
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We cannot make it rain but we can see to it that the rain falls on prepared soil.
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Prayer is first of all listening to God. It’s openness. God is always speaking; he’s always doing something.
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We are called to be fruitful – not successful, not productive, not accomplished. Success comes from strength, stress, and human effort. Fruitfulness comes from vulnerability and the admission of our own weakness.
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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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In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others.
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Community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another.
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Your heart is greater than your wounds.
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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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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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Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.
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The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing that is a friend who cares.
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In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds.
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Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.
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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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Those who keep speaking about the sun while walking under a cloudy sky are messengers of hope, the true saints of our day.
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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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The spiritual life is a life beyond moods. It is a life in which we choose joy and do not allow ourselves to become victims of passing feelings of happiness or depression.
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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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Life is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say, “I love you, too.”
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The fruits of your labors may be reaped two generations from now. Trust, even when you don’t see the results.
HENRI NOUWEN