Henri Nouwen Quotes

I'm a man of many emotions, so I'm a human being, and I think that's what people tend to forget sometimes.

What does the brain matter compared with the heart?

You can't help it but you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed — so you were a good man just the same.

An intellectual, heartless man never becomes an inspired man. It is always the heart that speaks in the man of love; it discovers a greater instrument than intellect can give you, the instrument of inspiration.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.

We may thank God that we can feel pain and know sadness, for these are the human sentiments that constitute our glory as well as our grief.

I'm a sensitive guy; I respond to things that make my eyes well up a little bit, or make me root for people. I find the human condition interesting.

Better to be without logic than without feeling.

We all know about love, faith, sadness, despair, hope, hopelessness, longing, desire... those are things we all have inside of us, and that's what my songs are about... what it means to be a human being.

I don't want our youth to become anti-romantic. We have to make room for the soul.

As humans, we are not so rationalist as we think we are. I think our biggest quality is indeed that we are human, truly human: if our biggest quality would be rationality, we would lose our soul.

When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone’s pain, it become compassion.

If we lose touch with our heart's wisdom, then no method avails; if we love, then nothing else is necessary.

We can bring a heart of understanding and compassion to a world that needs it so much.

He who's never loved cannot be good.

You know how they say we only use 10 percent of our brains? I think we only use 10 percent of our hearts.

It's love and the capacity for love that distinguishes one human being from another.

My son took many years to learn the simple truth. You cannot love any one person adequately until you have made friends with the rest of the human race also. Adult love demands qualities which cannot be learned living in a vacuum of resentment.

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

I tend to absorb a lot of what other people are feeling.

I'm a romantic, and we romantics are more sensitive to the way people feel. We love more, and we hurt more. When we're hurt, we hurt for a long time.

The greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity to feel the pain.

The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.

The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel; its poverty by how little.