Henri Nouwen Quotes

I consider ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man.

Young people especially sometimes feel that the standards of the Lord are like fences and chains, blocking them from those activities that seem most enjoyable in life.

So many limits in Catholic high school! I'm not a bad Catholic, but everything was off-limits.

It's wrong to try and convert tribal societies. What should the empirical evidence for religion be? It should produce peaceful, strong, secure people who are right with God and right with the world. I don't see that evidence very often.

So obviously, any religion embodies some form of rules and expectations for behavior, and even sometimes consequences, and they don't want to hear any of that.

Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that the Ten Commandments are a historical document that contains moral, ethical, and legal truisms that any person of any religion or even an atheist can recognize and appreciate.

The most important message that I can give to you and to all the world is to keep the commandments of God.

Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it.

The Ten Commandments have never been replaced as the moral basis upon which society rests.

I went to a Christian college. You would be expelled if you were caught in a movie theater. It was ridiculous.

Many British people of different faiths follow religious codes and practices and benefit a great deal from the guidance they offer.

Religion is sort of like a lift in your shoes. If it makes you feel better, fine. Just don't ask me to wear your shoes.

The duties of men are summarily comprised in the Ten Commandments, consisting of two tables; one comprehending the duties which we owe immediately to God-the other, the duties we owe to our fellow men.

A different vision of ethics is that of a collection of resources people can use to act better. The resources might be firm rules that could always be relied on. Or they might be ideals that could often be followed without thinking but that sometimes conflicted with one another.

As she read the ten commandments for the first time, a Chinese woman said, "I don't see how anyone can very well get on without them."

Do we need more laws? God forbid! We need more righteousness, more freedom, and more godly men -- and fewer laws.

The thing with Catholicism, the same as all religions, is that it teaches what should be, which seems rather incorrect. This is what should be. Now, if you're taught to live up to a what should be that never existed - only an occult superstition, no proof of this should be - then you can sit on a jury and indict easily, you can cast the first stone, you can burn Adolf Eichmann, like that!

It is belief in the Bible, the fruits of deep meditation, which has served me as the guide of my moral and literary life. I have found capital safely invested and richly productive of interest, although I have sometimes made but a bad use of it.

As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity?

The standard of the world, and the standard of the Lord Jesus, are indeed widely different. They are more than different. They are flatly contradictory one to the other.

It would not be easy even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.

Those...who insist that there are some moral limits that they will not violate, are forever surprising themselves.

The most important of all the commandments of God is that one that you are having the most difficulty keeping today.

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.