A happy life is a life for others. — Henri Nouwen

Life is not entertainment. Life is not distraction. — Henri Nouwen

One of the tragedies of our life is that we keep forgetting who we are — Henri J.M. Nouwen

In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

A spirituAl life without prAyer is like the gospel without Christ. — Henri Nouwen

Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next. — Henri Nouwen

Life is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say, ‘I love you, too. — Henri Nouwen

Life is a gift, not to possess, but to share. — Henri Nouwen

There are as many ways to pray as there are moments in life. — Henri Nouwen

Our life is…a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. — Henri Nouwen

Our lives are unique stones in the mosaic of human existence––priceless and irreplaceable. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

The spiritual life is a reaching out to our innermost self, to our fellow human and to our God. — Henri Nouwen

Life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared. — Henri Nouwen

Prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence. — Henri Nouwen

The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self–rejection. — Henri Nouwen

A life without a lonely place, that is, without a quiet center, becomes destructive. — Henri Nouwen

Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared. — Henri Nouwen

Prayer is the center of the Christian life. It is the only necessary thing. It is living with God, here and now. — Henri Nouwen

The crisis of our prayer life is that our minds may be filled with ideas of God while our hearts remain far from him. — Henri Nouwen

Pay attention to the people God puts in your path if you want to discern what God is up to in your life. — Henri Nouwen

The beginning and the end of all Christian leadership is to give your life for others. — Henri Nouwen

The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it — Henri J.M. Nouwen

If I were to let my life be taken over by what is urgent, I might very well never get around to what is essential. — Henri Nouwen

By giving words to these intimate experiences I can make my life available to others. — Henri Nouwen

As a general remark, I would say we must move from the moral to the mystical life. — Henri Nouwen

In solitude we become aware that our worth is not the same as our usefulness. — Henri Nouwen

In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. — Henri Nouwen

If you meet God in solitude, you discover the God you meet is the God who embraces all people. — Henri Nouwen

Solitude is the place of purification and transformation, the place of the great struggle and the great encounter. — Henri Nouwen

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. — Henri Nouwen

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

Obviously a child can never conceive solitude if his parents aren’t living it somewhere themselves. I don’t mean that to be alone you have to get down on your knees for an hour in a yoga posture. — Henri Nouwen

Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible. — Henri Nouwen

Jesus said Communion first, community comes out of that, and out of community, ministry. — Henri Nouwen

Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us. — Henri Nouwen

Ministry is the least important thing. You cannot not minister if you are in communion with God and live in community. — Henri Nouwen

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

Community always calls us back to solitude, and solitude always calls us to community. Community and solitude, both, are essential elements of ministry and witnessing. — Henri Nouwen

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

Community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another. — Henri Nouwen

Community is where humility and glory touch. — Henri Nouwen

If you want to know anything about community, you have to realize that the contemplative side is essential. Community without retreating and quiet time never survives. — Henri Nouwen

By prayer, community is created as well as expressed. — Henri Nouwen

I feel strongly that the God we meet in solitude is always the God who calls us to community. — Henri Nouwen

The best of community does give one a deep sense of belonging and well–being; and in that sense community takes away loneliness. — Henri Nouwen

I loved to teach, I loved my students, but I wanted to find a community. I prayed: ‘Lord, show me where you want me to go. I will go wanted wherever you call me–but please be clear. — Henri Nouwen

Community means that people come together around the table, not just to feed their bodies, but to feed their minds and their relationships. — Henri Nouwen

The church is not an institution forcing us to follow rules but a community inviting us to still our hunger and thirst at its table. — Henri Nouwen

I am learning that the best cure for hypocrisy is community. Hypocrisy is not so much the result of not living what I preach but much more of not confessing my inability to fully live up to my own words. — Henri Nouwen

Be sure that you make a difference in the world. — Henri Nouwen

The world is evil only when you become its slave. — Henri Nouwen

Yes, it’s a competitive world, but where is your heart? — Henri Nouwen

The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation… — Henri J.M. Nouwen

The most important thing I’ve come to believe in is that people with mental handicaps have a unique mission to bring God’s blessing to the World. — Henri Nouwen

The university has become a place that prepares you for the fights in the world. — Henri Nouwen

Joy is based on the spiritual knowledge that, while the world in which we live is shrouded in darkness, God has overcome the world. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

People who pray stand receptive before the world. They no longer grab but caress, they no longer bite but kiss, they no longer examine but admire. — Henri Nouwen

We want to prove we are good writers or good business, good parents or good teachers. The world is very competitive and catches us in this frenzy. It wants us to go here, be there, and be part of this or that. — Henri Nouwen

You don’t have to run around world proving you’re lovable. — Henri Nouwen

Beneath our frantic activities, there’s a deep desire to show the world we are worthwhile. — Henri Nouwen

Christmas is believing that the salvation of the world is God’s work, and not mine. — Henri Nouwen

When we have sold our identity to the judges of this world, we are bound to become restless, because of a growing need for affirmation and praise. — Henri Nouwen

You are a Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in, so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo, and keep saying that a new world is yet to come. — Henri Nouwen

When I could no longer cling to my normal supports I discovered that true support and real safety lie far beyond the structures of our world. — Henri Nouwen

God’s Kingdom is a place of abundance where every generous act overflows its original bounds and becomes part of the unbounded grace of God at work in the world. — Henri Nouwen

The friend who cares makes it clear that whatever happens in the external world, being present to each other is what really matters. In fact, it matters more than pain, illness, or even death. — Henri Nouwen

The great # conversion called for by Jesus is to move from belonging to the world to belonging to God. — Henri Nouwen

Everything changes radically from the moment you know yourself as being sent into this world. — Henri Nouwen

It’s good to have a prayer on your lips wherever you go. — Henri Nouwen

Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God. — Henri Nouwen

That’s prayer to let God’s Word speak deep within you and tell you, ‘You are my beloved. You don’t have to take an eye for an eye. No, no you’re too rich for that. — Henri Nouwen

The real ‘work’ of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me. — Henri Nouwen

Prayer is not what is done by us, but rather what is done by the Holy Spirit in us. — Henri Nouwen

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

Prayer is first of all listening to God. It’s openness. God is always speaking; he’s always doing something. — Henri Nouwen

It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we all are called. — Henri Nouwen

Take prayer with you wherever you go. Say it anytime, and then focus your mind and heart on God. — Henri Nouwen

It is God’s passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer. — Henri Nouwen

As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer. — Henri Nouwen

I am deeply convince that the necessity of prayer, and to pray unceasingly, is not as much based on our desire for God as on God’s desire for us. It is God’s passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer. — Henri Nouwen

You have to listen to the one who calls you beloved. That has to be affirmed over and over again. That is prayer–listening to the voice of the one who calls you ‘the beloved. — Henri Nouwen

Prayer is the beginning and the end, the source and the fruit, the core and the content, the basis and the goal of all peacemaking. — Henri Nouwen

Prayer and action…can never be seen as contradictory or mutually exclusive. Prayer without action grows into powerless pietism, and action without prayer degenerates into questionable manipulation. — Henri Nouwen

Spiritual identity means we are not what we do or what people say about us. And we are not what we have. We are the beloved daughters and sons of God. — Henri Nouwen

Friendship has always belonged to the core of my spiritual journey. — Henri Nouwen

Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you. — Henri Nouwen

It is not that the university as such is against spiritual formation. It is just that often the university does not know how to integrate spiritual formation within its academic disciplines. — Henri Nouwen

Although I am a committed Catholic priest, and nowhere hide that fact, my focus is very much a spiritual journey. — Henri Nouwen

Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life. …We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him. — Henri Nouwen

Solitude is an essential element for the spiritual health of a child. If we only stimulate our children–keep them busy with endless stories with no space to be alone–that’s not good. — Henri Nouwen

For me the university has always been an ideal context for spiritual formation. I always felt that if you want to offer spiritual formation at the university, you can. — Henri Nouwen

Waiting time is not wasting time. Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life. — Henri Nouwen

The Return of the Prodigal book] came out of my emotional and spiritual journey during the four months I was gone from Daybreak because of depression. — Henri Nouwen

One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there. — Henri Nouwen

It is precisely in times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God. — Henri Nouwen

To receive spiritual direction is to recognize that God does not solve our problems or answer all our questions, but leads us closer to the mystery of our existence where all questions cease. — Henri Nouwen

Discipline in the spiritual life is the concentrated effort to create the space and time where God can become our master and where we can respond freely to God’s guidance. — Henri Nouwen