579 Quotes by Henri J.M. Nouwen

The joy that compassion brings is one of the best-kept secrets of humanity. It is a secret known only to a very few people, a secret that has to be rediscovered over and over again.

Be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate.

Active waiting is essential to the spiritual life.

I really believe that what we finally want is to know God, as God has come to be known through Jesus. Knowledge is knowledge of the heart – the Spirit – I would say. It is the Spirit in us who reveals God.

Mourning our losses is the first step away from resentment and toward gratitude. The tears of our grief can soften our hardened hearts and open us to the possibility to say “thanks.

We are all healers who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.

Poverty, pain, struggle, anguish, agony, and even inner darkness may continue to be part of our experience. They may even be God’s way of purifying us. But life is no longer boring, resentful, depressing, or lonely because we have come to know that everything that happens is part of our way to the Father.

Unlike a fairy tale, the parable provides no happy ending. Instead, it leaves us face to face with one of life’s hardest spiritual choices: to trust or not to trust in God’s all-forgiving love.

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.