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Those who think that they have arrived, have lost their way. Those who think they have reached their goal, have missed it. Those who think they are saints, are demons.
Henri Nouwen
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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
Goal
Demons
Lost
Arrived
Way
Saints
Think
Missed
Thinking
Demon
Reached
Saint
Finished
More quotes by Henri Nouwen
The pain that comes from deep love makes your love more fruitful. It is like a plow that breaks the ground to allow the seed to take root.
Henri Nouwen
I still believe that the university is a place where people can develop their minds and learn skills, but also they can develop their personalities and their spiritual life.
Henri Nouwen
The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
Henri Nouwen
Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God's eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God's heart.
Henri Nouwen
As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer.
Henri Nouwen
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.
Henri Nouwen
The dance of life finds its beginnings in grief......Here a completely new way of living is revealed. It is the way in which pain can be embraced, not out of a desire to suffer, but in the knowledge that something new will be born in the pain.
Henri Nouwen
Aging does not need to be hidden or denied, but can be understood, affirmed and experienced as a process of growth by which the mystery of life is slowly revealed to us.
Henri Nouwen
As a general remark, I would say we must move from the moral to the mystical life.
Henri Nouwen
Forgiveness means that I continually am willing to forgive the other person for not being God — for not fulfilling all my needs. I, too, must ask forgiveness for not being able to fulfill other people's needs. … The interesting thing is that when you can forgive people for not being God, then you can celebrate that they are a reflection of God.
Henri Nouwen
Although we tend to think about saints as holy and pious, and picture them with halos above their heads and ecstatic gazes, true saints are much more accessible. They are men and women like us, who live ordinary lives and struggle with ordinary problems. What makes them saints is their clear and unwavering focus on God and God's people.
Henri Nouwen
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
It is God’s passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer.
Henri Nouwen
The world is evil only when you become its slave.
Henri Nouwen
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
In God's eyes the most significant is often the most hidden.
Henri Nouwen
Forgiveness changes the way we remember. It converts the curse into a blessing. Forgiveness indeed heals memories . . .
Henri Nouwen
I was forced to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there, and to choose, in the face of it all, not death but life.
Henri Nouwen
True Hospitality is welcoming the stranger on her own terms. This kind of hospitality can only be offered by those who've found the center of their lives in their own hearts.
Henri Nouwen
Everything changes radically from the moment you know yourself as being sent into this world.
Henri Nouwen
