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Stop looking for peace. Give yourselves where you are. Stop looking at yourselves, look instead at your brothers and sisters in need. Ask how you can better love your brothers and sisters. Then you will find peace.
Jean Vanier
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Jean Vanier
Age: 90 †
Born: 1928
Born: September 10
Died: 2019
Died: May 7
Naval Officer
Philosopher
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Genève
Looks
Stop
Need
Asks
Giving
Looking
Needs
Peace
Love
Give
Sisters
Better
Brothers
Find
Brother
Look
Instead
More quotes by Jean Vanier
If we love (the poor) people, we want to identify with them and share with them.
Jean Vanier
To love someone is to show to them their beauty, their worth and their importance.
Jean Vanier
I remember that throughout history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it always...whenever you are in doubt that that is God's way - the way the world is meant to be. Think of that and then try to do His way.
Jean Vanier
A tension or difficulty can signal the approach of a new grace of God. But it has to be looked at wisely and humanly.
Jean Vanier
A community is only a community when the majority of its members are making the transition from 'the community for myself' to 'myself for the community'.
Jean Vanier
Every act of violence is also a message that needs to be understood. (23-24)
Jean Vanier
'Going home' is a journey to the heart of who we are, a place where we can be ourselves and welcome the reality of our beauty and our pain. From this acceptance of ourselves, we can accept others as they are and we can see our common humanity.
Jean Vanier
Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness
Jean Vanier
A community that is growing rich and seeks only to defend its goods and its reputation is dying. It has ceased to grow in love. A community is alive when it is poor and its members feel they have to work together and remain united, if only to ensure that they can all eat tomorrow!
Jean Vanier
It is difficult to make people understand that the ideal doesn't exist, that personal equilibrium and the harmony they dream of come only after years and years of struggle, and that even then they come only as flashes of grace and peace.
Jean Vanier
We don’t know what to do with our own pain, so what to do with the pain of others? We don’t know what to do with our own weakness except hide it or pretend it doesn’t exist. So how can we welcome fully the weakness of another if we haven’t welcomed our own weakness?
Jean Vanier
One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them find self-confidence and inner healing.
Jean Vanier
Many people confuse authority and the power of efficiency, as if the first role of people with responsibility is to take decisions, command effectively and so exercise power. But their role first of all is to be a person to whom others can turn for help and advice, to provide security, to affirm, to support, to encourage and to guide.
Jean Vanier
Wisdom is something that comes, little by little, through a lot of listening.
Jean Vanier
If we are to grow in love, the prisons of our egoism must be unlocked. This implies suffering, constant effort and repeated choices.
Jean Vanier
We discover that we are at the same time very insignificant and very important, because each of our actions is preparing the humanity of tomorrow it is a tiny contribution to the construction of the huge and glorious final humanity
Jean Vanier
People may come to our communities because they want to serve the poor they will only stay once they have discovered that they themselves are poor.
Jean Vanier
Every human being is a mixture of light and darkness, trust and fear, love and hate.
Jean Vanier
In the end, the most important thing is not to do things for people who are poor and in distress, but to enter into relationship with them, to be with them and help them find confidence in themselves and discover their own gifts.
Jean Vanier
Life is a succession of crises and moments when we have to rediscover who we are and what we really want.
Jean Vanier