Henri Nouwen Quotes

We are looking for happiness and running after it in such a way that creates anger, fear and discrimination. So when you attend a retreat, you have a chance to look at the deep roots of this pollution of the collective energy that is unwholesome.

When you acknowledge the integrity of your solitude, and settle into its mystery, your relationships with others take on a new warmth, adventure and wonder.

Solitude is very different from a 'time-out' from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other.

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.

We are becoming able to see the pursuit of external power for what it is and the futility of trying to escape the pain of powerlessness by changing the world. When we look inward, not outward, we can dismantle the parts of our personalities that have controlled us for so long - such as anger, jealousy, vindictiveness, superiority, inferiority.

Being alone & actually sitting with our own thoughts can lead to such growth and realizations that are rare in our everyday busy lives.

I find peace anywhere I go. It depends on what is within the walls of my own home.

When we have ceased to love the stench of the human animal, either in others or in ourselves, then are we condemned to misery, and clear thinking can begin.

The hardest thing to find in life is balance - especially the more success you have, the more you look to the other side of the gate. What do I need to stay grounded, in touch, in love, connected, emotionally balanced? Look within yourself.

We talk of communing with Nature, but 'tis with ourselves we commune... Nature furnishes the conditions - the solitude - and the soul furnishes the entertainment.

I feel most at home when I'm alone. That's not sad. It's just I feel closest to source and connection when I'm by myself.

Whether you call it meditation, self-reflection or just shutting everything out, I am quite good at that.

It is very important to have connection with your soul and open your heart to people.

If you can't find peace inside, you'll never be at peace.

I meditate. I need that time to stay true to who I am.

My whole teaching consists of two words, meditation and love.

The more you meditate, the more helpful you can be to others, and the more deeply you will be in tune with God.

Sitting alone, listening to the sound of your breath, the beating of your heart is a reminder that you are sacred and blessed.

And meditation is nothing but enjoying your beautiful aloneness. Celebrating yourself; that's what meditation is all about.

Not only does silence give us a chance to understand ourselves better, to get a truer and more balanced perspective on our own lives in relation to the lives of others: silence makes us whole if we let it. Silence helps draw together the scattered and dissipated energies of a fragmented existence.

Meditation is like the moon: it transforms the energy of lust into love, anger into compassion, greed into sharing, aggressiveness into receptivity, ego into humbleness.

The starting point of discovering who you are, your gifts, your talents, your dreams, is being comfortable with yourself. Spend time alone. Write in a journal. Take long walks in the woods.

If you cannot find peace within yourself, you will never find it anywhere else.

When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.