Quotes by Henri Nouwen

About Henri Nouwen:

Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen, was a Dutch-born Catholic priest, professor and writer. His interests were rooted primarily in psychology, pastoral ministry, spirituality, social justice and community. Over the course of his life, Nouwen was heavily influenced by the work of Anton Boisen, Thomas Merton, Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh and Jean Vanier.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

In their poverty, the mentally handicapped reveal God to us and hold us close to the gospel.

Henri Nouwen

Ministry is the least important thing. You cannot not minister if you are in communion with God and live in community.

Henri Nouwen

Just as people can watch spellbound a circus artist tumbling through the air in a phosphorized costume, so they can listen to a preacher who uses the Word of God to draw attention to himself. But a sensational preacher stimulates the senses and leave...

Henri Nouwen

God is a God of the present. God is always in the moment, be that moment hard or easy, joyful and painful.

Henri Nouwen

God wants you to live for others and to live that presence well.

Henri Nouwen

Spiritual identity means we are not what we do or what people say about us. And we are not what we have. We are the beloved daughters and sons of God.

Henri Nouwen

Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God.

Henri Nouwen

Perhaps nothing helps us make the movement from our little selves to a larger world than remembering God in gratitude. Such a perspective puts God in view in all of life, not just in the moments we set aside for worship or spiritual disciplines. Not ...

Henri Nouwen

To be a Christian who is willing to travel with Christ on his downward road requires being willing to detach oneself constantly from any need to be relevant, and to trust ever more deeply the Word of God.

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

Peacemaking is a full-time vocation that includes each member of God's people.

Henri Nouwen

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

The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.

Henri Nouwen

The spiritual life is not a life before, after, or beyond our everyday existence. No, the spiritual life can only be real when it is lived in the midst of the pains and joys of the here and now.

Henri Nouwen

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 t...

Henri Nouwen

A life without a lonely place, that is, without a quiet center, becomes destructive.

Henri Nouwen

Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.

Henri Nouwen

The man who can articulate the movements of his inner life need no longer be a victim of himself, but is able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering.

Henri Nouwen

I've had a tremendous problem with depression in my life. I'd rather not talk about it, because it's over. But depression is real.

Henri Nouwen

Living in a community with very wounded people, I came to see that I had lived most of my life as a tightrope artist trying to walk on a high, thin cable from one tower to the other, always waiting for the applause when I had not fallen off and broke...

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

Author Bio

  • NameHenri Nouwen
  • DescriptionDutch priest and writer
  • BornJanuary 24, 1932
  • DiedOctober 2, 1996
  • CountryNetherlands
  • ProfessionPresbyter; Writer; Priest