Quotes from Jean Vanier

Our danger is to think that happiness will come from outside of us, from the things we possess or the power of our group, and not from within us, from the inner sanctuary of our being.

A tension or difficulty can signal the approach of a new grace of God. But it has to be looked at wisely and humanly.

People are longing to rediscover true community. We have had enough of loneliness, independence and competition.

Envy comes from people's ignorance of, or lack of belief, in their own gifts.

An ethics of desire is good news for those of us who have become allergic to an ethics of law.

We are not called by God to do extraordinary things, but to do ordinary things with extraordinary love.

Power always has a direction. It is always downward, towards the weak but power is often confused with what is right

Prayer is like a secret garden made up of silence and rest and inwardness. But there are a thousand and one doors into this garden and we all have to find our own.

To be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefor unloveable. Loneliness is a taste of death. No wonder some people who are desperately lonely lose themselves in mental illness or violence to forget the inner pain.

We are not called by God to do extraordinary things, but to do ordinary things with extraordinary love.

Many people are good at talking about what they are doing, but in fact do little. Others do a lot but don't talk about it; they are the ones who make a community live.

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.

Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don't need a lot of money to be happy--in fact, the opposite.

Every child, every person needs to know that they are a source of joy; every child, every person, needs to be celebrated. Only when all of our weaknesses are accepted as part of our humanity can our negative, broken self-images be transformed.

Love doesn't mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness.

To love someone is to show to them their beauty, their worth and their importance.

If we are to grow in love, the prisons of our egoism must be unlocked. This implies suffering, constant effort and repeated choices.

When we love and respect people, revealing to them their value, they can begin to come out from behind the walls that protect them.

When people love each other, they are content with very little. When we have light and joy in our hearts, we don't need material wealth. The most loving communities are often the poorest. If our own life is luxurious and wasteful, we can't approach poor people. If we love people, we want to identify with them and share with them.

Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness

A Christian community should do as Jesus did: propose and not impose. Its attraction must lie in the radiance cast by the love of brothers.

Peace is the fruit of love, a love that is also justice. But to grow in love requires work -- hard work. And it can bring pain because it implies loss -- loss of the certitudes, comforts, and hurts that shelter and define us.

Jesus is the starving, the parched, the prisoner, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the dying. Jesus is the oppressed, the poor. To live with Jesus is to live with the poor. To live with the poor is to live with Jesus.

All of us have a secret desire to be seen as saints, heroes, martyrs. We are afraid to be children, to be ourselves.