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Henri Nouwen Inspirational Quotes (277)

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When you recognize the festive and the still moments as moments of prayer, then you gradually realize that to pray is to live.
Henri Nouwen
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If we want other people to give us something that only God can give, we become a demon. We say, Love me! and before you know it we become violent and demanding and manipulative. It's so important that we keep forgiving one another - not once in a while, but every moment of life.
Henri Nouwen
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When we are securely rooted in personal intimacy with the source of life, it will be possible to remain flexible without being relativistic, convinced without being rigid, willing to confront without being offensive, gentle and forgiving without being soft, and true witnesses without being manipulative.
Henri Nouwen
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I am very grateful that I am in touch with so many different church groups. I am always very moved by the fact that so many people - practically over the spectrum of the Christian world - are responding to my writing.
Henri Nouwen
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Friendship has always belonged to the core of my spiritual journey.
Henri Nouwen
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Pay attention to the people God puts in your path if you want to discern what God is up to in your life.
Henri Nouwen
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The friend who cares makes it clear that whatever happens in the external world, being present to each other is what really matters. In fact, it matters more than pain, illness, or even death.
Henri Nouwen
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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 Nouwen
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Ministry is the least important thing. You cannot not minister if you are in communion with God and live in community.
Henri Nouwen
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Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn. Perhaps this is what it means to be human.
Henri Nouwen
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Good families always ritualize the table. You can say, This is a Christmas meal this is a birthday meal.
Henri Nouwen
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The real question is: how can I live so that my death will be fruitful for others?
Henri Nouwen
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Do not tell everyone your story. You will only end up feeling more rejected. People cannot give you what you long for in your heart. The more you expect from people's response to your experience of abandonment, the more you will feel exposed to ridicule.
Henri Nouwen
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In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us.
Henri Nouwen
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The mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God.
Henri Nouwen
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The spiritual life is a reaching out to our innermost self, to our fellow human and to our God.
Henri Nouwen
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A sense of solitude is one of the most beautiful things that parents can give a child. It doesn't mean leaving the child alone, but it does mean creating safe spaces where the child can be with other people. It does mean directing their attention to God.
Henri Nouwen
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'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
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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
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What is Hope?Hope is that inner dynamic that compels us to explore and pursue the expectations built into the human condition. Hope was born the day the first human beings discovered the first bridge and decided not to jump off the bridge in despair, but to cross it
Henri Nouwen
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I am beginning now to see how radically the character of my spiritual journey will change when I no longer think of God as hiding out and making it as difficult as possible for me to find him, but instead as the one who is looking for me while I am doing the hiding.
Henri Nouwen
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I am working on three things: on being a prayerful person on staying close to the handicapped and on my writing. These are my constant concerns.
Henri Nouwen
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For me the university has always been an ideal context for spiritual formation. I always felt that if you want to offer spiritual formation at the university, you can.
Henri Nouwen
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Although many, we might even say most, strangers in this world become easily the victim of a fearful hostility, it is possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings.
Henri Nouwen
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