464 Quotes by Henri Nouwen

Solitude is the place where we can connect with profound bonds that are deeper than the emergency bonds of fear and anger.

There is nothing so important in the family as the sacred quality of the meal.

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

The more you are called to speak for God's love, the more you will need to deepen the knowledge of that love in your own heart. The farther the outward journey takes you, the deeper the inward journey must be. Only when your roots are deep can your fruits be abundant.

When you recognize the festive and the still moments as moments of prayer, then you gradually realize that to pray is to live.

Our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.

He who thinks that he is finished is finished. How true. Those who think that they have arrived, have lost their way. Those who think they have reached their goal, have missed it. Those who think they are saints, are demons.

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.

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.