579 Quotes by Henri J.M. Nouwen

Solitude, community, and ministry are certainly not just for celibates! Celibates also have a hard time keeping up.

We have to keep asking ourselves: ‘What does it all mean? What is God trying to tell us? How are we called to live in the midst of all this?’ Without such questions our lives become numb and flat.

The spiritual life is a life beyond moods. It is a life in which we choose joy and do not allow ourselves to become victims of passing feelings of happiness or depression.

Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own.

In a strange way the spiritual life isn’t “useful” or “successful.” But it is meant to be fruitful. And fruitfulness comes out of brokenness.

Keep a space where God can let something totally new take place.

Prayer for others, therefore, cannot be seen as an extraordinary exercise that must be practiced from time to time. Rather, it is the very beat of the compassionate heart.

Two people can be part of the same event, but one may choose to live it quite differently from the other. One may choose to trust that what happened, painful as it may be, holds a promise. The other may choose despair and be destroyed by it. What makes us human is precisely this freedom of choice.

We all are children and parents, students and teachers, healers and in need of care.