Quotes from Henri Nouwen

Prayer is first of all listening to God. It's openness. God is always speaking; he's always doing something.

Prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence.

Somewhere we know that without silence, words lose their meaning.

Let's dare to enter into an intimate relationship with God without fear, trusting that we will receive love and always more love.

When we have nothing to cling to as our own and cease thinking of ourselves as people who must defend privileges, we can open ourselves freely to others with the faithful expectation that our strength will manifest itself in our shared weakness.

For many, religion has to do with what we are allowed to do and not allowed to do. In the end, that doesn't bear fruit.

I often wonder if my knowledge about God has not become my greatest stumbling block to my knowledge of God.

Community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another.

Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn. Perhaps this is what it means to be human.

The Lord is coming, always coming. When you have ears to hear and eyes to see, you will recognize him at any moment of your life. Life is Advent; life is recognizing the coming of the Lord

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.

Too many of us are lonely ministers practicing a lonely ministry.

The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised.

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.

Our life is...a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment.

In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others.

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.

We just have to recognize life for what it is: a gift to be grateful for, not a property to cling to, hoard, or defend.

Your life is not going to be easy, and it should not be easy. It ought to be hard. It ought to be radical; it ought to be restless; it ought to lead you to places you'd rather not go.

One of the tragedies of our life is that we keep forgetting who we are

Jesus didn't say, 'Blessed are those who care for the poor.' He said, 'Blessed are we where we are poor, where we are broken.' It is there that God loves us deeply and pulls us into deeper communion with himself.

As peacemakers, we must resist all the powers of war and destruction and proclaim that peace is the divine gift offered to all who affirm life. Resistance means saying 'No' to all the forces of death, wherever they may be.

Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you're not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn't planned or counted on.

Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next.