Henri Nouwen Quotes About Giving

Quotes about: Giving

• Dare to love and to be a real friend. The love you give and receive is a reality that will lead you closer and closer to God as well as those whom God has given you to love.

  Henri Nouwen

  Love, Real, Giving

  Henri Nouwen (2010). “The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom”, p.81, Image

• 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.

  Henri Nouwen

  Life, Motivational, Friendship

  "Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life". Book by Henri Nouwen, 1974.

• The more you have loved and have allowed yourself to suffer because of your love, the more you will be able to let your heart grow wider and deeper. When your love is truly giving and receiving, those whom you love will not leave your heart even when they depart from you. The pain of rejection, absence, and death can become fruitful. Yes, as you love deeply the ground of your heart will be broken more and more, but you will rejoice in the abundance of the fruit it will bear.

  Henri Nouwen

  Pain, Heart, Love Is

• However, 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.
  Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own.
  The question, therefore, is not 'How can we make community?' but, 'How can we develop and nurture giving hearts?'

  Henri Nouwen

  Spiritual, Heart, Giving

  Henri J. M. Nouwen (2009). “Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith”, p.23, Harper Collins

• Friendship is one of the greatest gifts a human being can receive. It is a bond beyond common goals, common interests, or common histories. It is a bond stronger than sexual union can create, deeper than a shared fate can solidify, and even more intimate than the bonds of marriage or community. Friendship is being with the other in joy and sorrow, even when we cannot increase the joy or decrease the sorrow. It is a unity of souls that gives nobility and sincerity to love. Friendship makes all of life shine brightly.

  Henri Nouwen

  Fate, Giving, Goal

  Henri J. M. Nouwen (2009). “Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith”, p.7, Harper Collins

• When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand.

  Henri Nouwen

  Love, Friendship, Pain

  "Kindness Can Open Hearts and Unexpected Opportunities" by Kare Anderson, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 17, 2015.

• For as long as you can remember, you have been a pleaser, depending on others to give you an identity. You need not look at that only in a negative way. You wanted to give your heart to others, and you did so quickly and easily. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you. You must stop being a pleaser and reclaim your identity as a free self.

  Henri Nouwen

  Letting Go, Heart, Remember You

  Henri Nouwen (2010). “The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom”, p.5, Image

• Most Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love.

  Henri Nouwen

  Christian, Intimate Relationships, People

• We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with him and him alone. Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; only with a singleminded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature.

  Henri Nouwen

  Giving Up, Healing, Grace

  "The Spiritual Life: Eight Essential Titles by Henri Nouwen".

• This brief lifetime is my opportunity to receive love, deepen love, grow in love, and give love.

  Henri Nouwen

  Opportunity, Deep Love, Giving

  Henri J. M. Nouwen (2017). “You are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living”, Hachette UK

• Through compassion it is possible to recognize that the craving for love that people feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses. Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends' eyes and our hatred in their bitter mouths. When they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they give life, we know that we can do the same. For a compassionate person nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.

  Henri Nouwen

  Heart, Eye, Compassion

• We need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.

  Henri Nouwen

  Angel, Giving, Joy

• Our humanity comes to its fullest bloom in giving. We become beautiful people when we give whatever we can give: a smile, a handshake, a kiss, an embrace, a word of love, a present, a part of our life...all of our life.

  Henri Nouwen

  Beautiful, Kissing, People

• My hope is that the description of God's love in my life will give you the freedom and the courage to discover... God's love in yours.

  Henri Nouwen

  Giving, Description, God's Love

  "Here and Now: Living in the Spirit". Book by Henri Nouwen, p. 175, 1994.

• The great teachers are always those who can live the tension. They are not criticizing everybody, they're not complaining. They give young people a vision.

  Henri Nouwen

  Teacher, People, Giving

  Source: archives.wineskins.org

• Our greatest fulfillment lies in giving ourselves to others.

  Henri Nouwen

  Lying, Compassion, Giving

• Indeed, when God's glory dwells in me, there is nothing too far away, nothing too painful, nothing too strange or too familiar that it cannot contain and renew by its touch. Every time I recognize the glory of God in me and give it space to manifest itself to me, all that is human can be brought there and nothing will be the same again.

  Henri Nouwen

  Space, Giving, Strange

• We have probably wondered in our many lonesome moments if there is one corner in this competitive, demanding world where it is safe to be relaxed, to expose ourselves to someone else, and to give unconditionally. It might be very small and hidden, but if this corner exists, it calls for a search through the complexities of our human relationships in order to find it.

  Henri Nouwen

  Order, Giving, World

  Henri J. M. Nouwen (2005). “The Dance of Life: Weaving Sorrows and Blessings Into One Joyful Step”

• God, help me to see others not as enemies or as ungodly but rather as thirsty people. And give me the courage and compassion to offer your Living Water, which alone quenches deep thirst.

  Henri Nouwen

  Compassion, Giving, Water

• In 1970 I felt so lonely that I could not give; now I feel so joyful that giving seems easy. I hope that the day will come when the memory of my present joy will give me the strength to keep giving even when loneliness gnaws at my heart.

  Henri Nouwen

  Happiness, Lonely, Memories

• Do not despair, thinking that you cannot change yourself after so many years. Simply enter into the presence of Jesus as you are and ask him to give you a fearless heart where he can be with you. You cannot make yourself different. Jesus came to give you a new heart, a new spirit, a new mind, and a new body. Let him transform you by his love and so enable you to receive his affection in your whole being.

  Henri Nouwen

  Jesus, Heart, Thinking

• 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

  Loneliness, Giving, Community

  Source: archives.wineskins.org

• Prayer is the breath of your life which gives you the freedom to go and stay where you wish and to find the many signs which point out the way to a new land.

  Henri Nouwen

  Life, Prayer, Land

• Simply being with someone is difficult because it asks of us that we share in the other's vulnerability, enter with him or her into the experience of weakness and powerlessness, become part of the uncertainty, and give up control and self-determination.

  Henri Nouwen

  Determination, Giving Up, Self

• If you feel a great loneliness and a deep longing for human contact, you have to be extremely discerning...and ask yourself whether this situation is truly God given. Because where God wants you to be, God holds you safe and gives you peace, even when there is pain. To live a disciplined life is to live in such a way that you want only to be where God is with you. The more deeply you live your spiritual life, the easier it will be to discern the difference between living with God and living without God, and the easier it will be to move away from the places where God is no longer with you.

  Henri Nouwen

  Spiritual, Pain, Loneliness

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