Henri Nouwen Quotes

When people feel that they have failed, it's usually because somebody or something caused them to feel that way and taste defeat. I refuse to dwell on that. Yes, it sucks at first, and the feeling is valid, but it all happens for a reason.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

I'm jealous. I'm mad. I feel bad. But one day, I woke up and I thought, you know what? This is wearing me out. And I'm not getting anywhere. So, I decided that even though I did not have a good beginning, I made a decision that I was going to let go of what lies behind and I was going to have a great finish.

Every human being has gone through a tragedy of sorts. And the idea is that you have two paths you can take, you can find that alchemy that turns lead into gold, find that magic where you can see the loss as an entry point for learning and grow from it and become wiser and stronger.

Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life, and when it comes, hold your head high, look it quarely in the eye and say, 'I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.

I learned, when hit by loss, to ask the right question: "What next?" instead of "Why me?" . . . Whenever I am willing to ask "What is necessary next?" I have moved ahead. Whenever I have taken no for a final answer I have stalled and gotten stuck.

To be born to create, to love, to win at games is to be born to live in time of peace. But war teaches us to lose everything and become what we were not. It all becomes a question of style.

You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.

I don't see life as an opportunity to see how far you can go in the pursuit of pain, although I think I've challenged it a bit.

Getting knocked down in life is a given. Getting up and moving forward is a choice.

Life gives no one immunity against adversity, but life gives to everyone the power of positive thought which is sufficient to master all circumstances of adversity and convert them into benefits.

Nothing that I can encounter today can be as bad as what is behind me. There are small things that used to upset me, but now I just think: Who cares?

On top of trying to find my way in this business and losing my mother and trying to figure out what family meant to me and everything - 2016, there was a lot of anger from me and a lot of anger all around. I think the hardest part was to really realize that all these things, it's worth it.

It isn’t defeat, but rather your mental attitude toward it, that whips you.

Man's freedom is never in being saved from troubles, but it is the freedom to take trouble for his own good, to make the trouble an element in his joy.

But where pain was, healing could come; where loneliness was, new relationships could be formed; where rejection was, new love could be found. It was a moment. And moments changed. She would have to live through the moment to get to the next.

It's like my garden, love. Everything grows. Including love. And with that growing everyday how can you expect missing her to ever fade away? Everything builds, including our ability to cope with it. That's how we keep going.

If you become a master of meaning, you become a master of your life. Two people can have the same experience. One person decides that because of that experience his or her life is over, while the other decides that God has challenged him or her to step up, face the challenge, and become more than he or she ever was before.

Most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.

When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways - either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength.

Carry in your memory, for the rest of your life, the good things that came out of those difficulties. They will serve as a proof of your abilities and will give you confidence when you are faced by other obstacles.

Sometimes there is nothing you can do, and in those times, you must do something anyway.

You do not need to let anything get you down, but if you are down you certainly need not let anything keep you down.

What matters most is how you respond to your heartbreaks and your disappointments and your fears. What matters most is who you become in response to them.

I don't know who will overcome losses, some losses aren't meant to be overcome, but all losses make for good stories and good character development and all the jazz that makes a show compelling and watchable.