"The difference between rich and poor is not that the rich sin is more than the poor, that the rich find it easier to call sin a virtue."
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Quote collection
Henri Nouwen quotes (page 13 of 25)
497 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Every time you reject yourself, you idealize others"
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"Ministers are tempted to join the ranks of those who consider it their primary task to keep other people busy … But our task is the opposite of distraction … how to keep them from being so busy that they can no longer hear the voice of God who speaks in silence."
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"I'm learning that the blessing is located in our poor people, in people who are weak; they are the ones we should stay close to, not because they need us but because we need to receive from them the blessing."
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"In God's eyes the most significant is often the most hidden."
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"One of the experiences of prayer is that it seems that nothing happens. But when you start with it and look back over a long period of prayer, you suddenly realize that something has happened. What is most close, most intimate, most present, often cannot be experienced directly but only with a certain distance. When I think that I am only distracted, just wasting my time, something is happening too Immediate for knowing, understanding, and experiencing. Only in retrospect do I realize that something very important has taken place."
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"When you recognize the festive and the still moments as moments of prayer, then you gradually realize that to pray is to live."
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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."
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"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."
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"What is forgotten cannot be healed, and that which cannot be healed easily becomes the cause of greater evil."
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"People have filled an enormously important role in my life - more than books! For me, it's not the formal advising or the therapy that meant so much. It was more the fact that someone committed himself or herself to me. They were really interested in my life; they wanted to know what I was doing; they followed me; they dared to confront and challenge me."
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"Where true inner freedom is, there is God. And where God is, there we want to be."
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"In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us."
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"Although I am a committed Catholic priest, and nowhere hide that fact, my focus is very much a spiritual journey."
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"Let's dare to enter into an intimate relationship with God without fear, trusting that we will receive love and always more love."
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"Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment. It is amazing how many occasions present themselves in which I can choose gratitude instead of a complaint."
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"Dear God, I am so afraid to open my clenched fists! Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to? Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands? Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not what I own, but what you want to give me."
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"I am beginning now to see how radically the character of my spiritual journey will change when I no longer think of God as hiding out and making it as difficult as possible for me to find him, but instead as the one who is looking for me while I am doing the hiding."
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"To live in the present, we must deeply believe that what is most important is in the here and now."
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"We are not the healers, we are not the reconcilers, we are not the givers of life. We are sinful, broken, vulnerable people who need as much care as anyone we care for."
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