Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Henri Nouwen
Age: 64 †
Born: 1932
Born: January 24
Died: 1996
Died: September 21
Catholic Priest
Presbyter
Priest
Psychologist
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen
People
Caring
Teach
Alone
Together
Better
Important
Heart
Mind
Handicaps

More quotes by Henri Nouwen

Image
I had a deep experience of God's love for me.
Henri Nouwen
Image
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
Image
Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so 'in-between' things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe.
Henri Nouwen
Image
Our tendency is to run from the painful realities or try to change them as soon as possible. But cure without care makes us into rulers, controllers, manipulators.
Henri Nouwen
Image
The art of living is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark.
Henri Nouwen
Image
The spiritual life is a reaching out to our innermost self, to our fellow human and to our God.
Henri Nouwen
Image
I really believe that what we finally want is to know God, as God has come to be known through Jesus. Knowledge is knowledge of the heart - the Spirit - I would say. It is the Spirit in us who reveals God.
Henri Nouwen
Image
You have to dare to live through the pain and struggle. Acknowledge your anguish but do not let it pull you out of yourself. Hold on to your chosen direction, your discipline, your prayer, your work, your guides, and trust that one day love will have conquered enough of you that even the most fearful part will allow love to cast out all fear.
Henri Nouwen
Image
Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us.
Henri Nouwen
Image
In this crazy world, there's an enormous distinction between good times and bad, between sorrow and joy. But in the eyes of God, they're never separated. Where there is pain, there is healing. Where there is mourning, there is dancing. Where there is poverty, there is the kingdom.
Henri Nouwen
Image
Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour.
Henri Nouwen
Image
When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope.
Henri Nouwen
Image
a spiritual life without prayer is like the gospel without Christ.
Henri Nouwen
Image
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
Image
Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.
Henri Nouwen
Image
That's the temptation of the devil: Turn stones into bread! Be relevant!
Henri Nouwen
Image
The way of Jesus is radically different. It is the way not of upward mobility but of downward mobility. It is going to the bottom, staying behind the sets and choosing the last place! Why is the way of Jesus worth choosing? Because it is the way to the Kingdom, the way Jesus took, and the way that brings everlasting life.
Henri Nouwen
Image
When you have loved deeply, that love can grow even stronger after the death of the person you love. That is the core message of Jesus.
Henri Nouwen
Image
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.
Henri Nouwen
Image
There is nothing so important in the family as the sacred quality of the meal.
Henri Nouwen