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What is forgotten cannot be healed, and that which cannot be healed easily becomes the cause of greater evil.

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
Cause
Becomes
Causes
Greater
Evil
Cannot
Healed
Easily
Forgotten

More quotes by Henri Nouwen

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Reading with children is an enormous gift to them. It's a great honor to invite children to read with adults.
Henri Nouwen
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If you want to know anything about community, you have to realize that the contemplative side is essential. Community without retreating and quiet time never survives.
Henri Nouwen
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You don't think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.
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The university has become a place that prepares you for the fights in the world.
Henri Nouwen
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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
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...When you can look into the face of human beings and you have enough light to recognize them as your brothers and sisters. Up until then it is night and darkness is still with us. Let us pray for the light. It is the peace the world cannot give.
Henri Nouwen
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Simply being with someone is difficult because it asks of us that we share in the other's vulnerability, enter with him or her into the experience of weakness and powerlessness, become part of the uncertainty, and give up control and self-determination.
Henri Nouwen
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If you meet God in solitude, you discover the God you meet is the God who embraces all people.
Henri Nouwen
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As a general remark, I would say we must move from the moral to the mystical life.
Henri Nouwen
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What once seemed such a curse has become a blessing. All the agony that threatened to destroy my life now seems like the fertile ground for greater trust, stronger hope, and deeper love.
Henri Nouwen
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It is in solitude that we discover that being is more important than having and that we are worth more than the results of our efforts. In solitude we discover that our life is not a possession to be defended but a gift to be shared.
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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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
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I speak of God's love and grace and redemption and freedom, but when I say in the context of this community, it is heard differently. To be with people so obviously broken, so obviously handicapped, and here to discover real joy and peace - that makes the Word of God come alive.
Henri Nouwen
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Compassion can never coexist with judgement because judgement creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.
Henri Nouwen
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If I were to let my life be taken over by what is urgent, I might very well never get around to what is essential.
Henri Nouwen
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Someday I would love to write about Vincent van Gogh - his paintings and letters continue to inspire me very much. But it remains hard to find the time and inner rest to write.
Henri Nouwen
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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.
Henri Nouwen
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What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.
Henri Nouwen
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There is nothing so important in the family as the sacred quality of the meal.
Henri Nouwen