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Henri Nouwen Quotes | Quotes said by Henri Nouwen

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #1

    As peacemakers, we must resist all the powers of war and destruction and proclaim that peace is the divine gift offered to all who affirm life. Resistance means saying 'No' to all the forces of death, wherever they may be.


  • Henri Nouwen Quote #2

    Asking people for money is giving them the opportunity to put their resources at the disposal of the Kingdom.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #3

    Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone's face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #4

    Fear is the great enemy of intimacy. Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other but does not create true intimacy.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #5

    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.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #6

    Friendship has always belonged to the core of my spiritual journey.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #7

    How much longer will I live?'... Only one thing seems clear to me. Every day should be well-lived. What a simple truth! Still, it is worthy of my attention.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #8

    If fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #9

    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 Nouwen Quote #10

    Intimacy is not a happy medium. It is a way of being in which the tension between distance and closeness is dissolved and a new horizon appears. Intimacy is beyond fear.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #11

    Just as people can watch spellbound a circus artist tumbling through the air in a phosphorized costume, so they can listen to a preacher who uses the Word of God to draw attention to himself. But a sensational preacher stimulates the senses and leaves the spirit untouched. Instead of being the way to God, his 'being different' gets in the way.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #12

    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 Nouwen Quote #13

    Most Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #14

    Our efforts to disconnect ourselves from our own suffering end up disconnecting our suffering from God's suffering for us. The way out of our loss and hurt is in and through.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #15

    Our glory is hidden in our pain, if we allow God to bring the gift of himself in our experience of it.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #16

    Our Western society is showing its technological muscles in ever more threatening ways, but the experience of fear, anxiety and even despair has increased in equal proportion. Indeed, the paradox is that the powerful giants feel as powerless as a new-born babe.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #17

    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 Nouwen Quote #18

    Perhaps nothing helps us make the movement from our little selves to a larger world than remembering God in gratitude. Such a perspective puts God in view in all of life, not just in the moments we set aside for worship or spiritual disciplines. Not just in the moments when life seems easy.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #19

    Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #20

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

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #21

    Solitude is very different from a 'time-out' from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #22

    The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. God loves us, not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #23

    The Christian leaders of the future have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God and are trained - through prayer, study, and careful analysis - to manifest the divine event of God's saving work in the midst of the many seemingly random events of their time.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #24

    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 healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #25

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

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #26

    The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #27

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

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #28

    The real enemies of our life are the 'oughts' and the 'ifs.' They pull us backward into the unalterable past and forward into the unpredictable future. But real life takes place in the here and now.

  • Henri Nouwen Quote #29

    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 Nouwen Quote #30

    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.

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