Top 40 Henri Nouwen Quotes

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.

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

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.

When we have nothing to cling to as our own and cease thinking of ourselves as people who must defend privileges, we can open ourselves freely to others with the faithful expectation that our strength will manifest itself in our shared weakness.

The spiritual life is not a life before, after, or beyond our everyday existence. No, the spiritual life can only be real when it is lived in the midst of the pains and joys of the here and now.

Our first responsibility in the midst of violence is to prevent it from destroying us.

Peacemaking is a full-time vocation that includes each member of God’s people.

Too many of us are lonely ministers practicing a lonely ministry.

To be a minister means above all to become powerless, or in more precise terms, to speak with our powerlessness to the condition of powerlessness which is so keenly felt but so seldom expressed by the people of our age.

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

To give someone a blessing is the most significant affirmation we can offer.

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.

Prayer is the beginning and the end, the source and the fruit, the core and the content, the basis and the goal of all peacemaking.

The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.

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.

God is a God of the present. God is always in the moment, be that moment hard or easy, joyful and painful.

‘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.

A life without a lonely place, that is, without a quiet center, becomes destructive.

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.

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.

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.

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

Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.

Waiting is a period of learning. The longer we wait, the more we hear about him for whom we are waiting.

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.

To learn patience is not to rebel against every hardship.

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

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.

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that life is not a creation of our will but rather an obedient response to the reality of our being united.

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

Ministry is the least important thing. You cannot not minister if you are in communion with God and live in community.

Spiritual identity means we are not what we do or what people say about us. And we are not what we have. We are the beloved daughters and sons of God.