Henri Nouwen Quotes

I started realizing how the condition of our hearts affects the way we see. If your heart is full of bitterness, anger, and resentment, you're going to look at this world as a very evil place.

I can hold on to that, that bitterness and that anger. It won't get me anywhere.

It's hard to be happy for someone when you know deep down they'd kill you if they had the chance.

You're so consumed with how much you get, you waste your time with hate and regret.

The jealous have but moments of Delight for years of Pain.

I believe that many people are unhappy because they have not learned to be grateful. Some carry the burden of bitterness and resentfulness for many years. Some pass their days as though suffering a deep sadness they cannot name. Others are unhappy because life didn’t turn out the way they thought it would.

Envy, if surrounded on all sides by the brightness of another's prosperity, like the scorpion confined within a circle of fire, will sting itself to death.

What is envy? It is nothing but passive jealousy. Maybe jealousy is too strong a phenomenon; envy is a little passive. The difference may be of degrees, but it is not of quality, it is only of quantity. Envy can become jealousy at any moment; envy is just jealousy in progress. Mind has to drop all envies and jealousies.

I warn you all, hatred is finding fertile soil within me. And in your compassion, in your every good intention, you nurture it.

I closed my eyes and rested my head against his chest, wishing sincerely that Rhiannon would get hit by a bus.

I don't understand my feelings. I really don't. I don't understand how I could hate you so much after so much time. How, no matter how much I'd like to not hate you, I hate you even more. It grows.

Our purest form of joy comes when people we envy get hurt. That most genuine form of joy.

Anger, resentment, envy, and self-pity are wasteful reactions. They greatly drain one's time. They sap energy better devoted to productive endeavors.

I do not forget any good deed done to me & I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.

Envy is the consuming desire to have everybody else as unsuccessful as you are.

Still, I hate them. But, of course, I hate almost everybody now. Myself more than anyone.

Our envy of others devours us most of all.

Hatred is so much easier to win than love - and so much harder to get rid of.

Envy may justly be called "the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity;" it is the most acid fruit that grows on the stock of sin, a fluid so subtle that nothing but the fire of divine love can purge it from the soul.

It was the first time I'd ever felt truly jealous of anyone else in my entire life.

Envy and hatred go together. Mutually strengthened by the fact pursue the same object.

Bitterness doesn't serve you any good. And it really tells you more about how you feel about yourself than anything you feel about your friends.

Whoever has freed himself from envy and bitterness may begin to try to see things as they are.

Resentment is at work when one so hates somebody for his more favorable circumstances that one is prepared to bear heavy losses if only the hated one might also come to harm. Many of those who attack capitalism know very well that their situation under any other economic system will be less favorable.