146 Quotes by Jean Vanier

In the end, the most important thing is not to do things for people who are poor and in distress, but to enter into relationship with them, to be with them and help them find confidence in themselves and discover their own gifts.

It is difficult to make people understand that the ideal doesn’t exist, that personal equilibrium and the harmony they dream of come only after years and years of struggle, and that even then they come only as flashes of grace and peace.

Those we most often exclude from the normal life of society, people with disabilities, have profound lessons to teach us.

Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness.

Peace is the fruit of love, a love that is also justice. But to grow in love requires work – hard work. And it can bring pain because it implies loss – loss of the certitudes, comforts, and hurts that shelter and define us.

The strong need the weak as much as the weak need the strong.

Love doesn’t mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness.

One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn’t as individuals.

A community which refuses to welcome – whether through fear, weariness, insecurity, a desire to cling to comfort, or just because it is fed up with visitors – is dying spiritually.