Henri Nouwen Quotes

'Made' is about opening your heart to people who deserve your love and not trying to turn other people into something that they're not: not trying to save people who don't want to be saved. If you go down that dark path, you're not going to end up doing any good.

Love them for who they are, and what they are they are; they are not you. Good stuff, isn't it? You have to live 73 years to get that.

Nobody asks you to love the whole world, only to be honest, ehrlich. Don't have a loud mouth. The more you love people the more they'll mix you up. A child loves, a person respects. Respect is better than love.

You could penetrate anybody if you consistently put out love. Some people can't handle it.

I used to love people for what they could be. I thought love was how hard you tried and how much you sacrificed and suffered. That is not love. Acceptance is.

With girls, friendships are hard because you have to learn to get to a maturity level to love them but not want to be them.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

Healthy shame is an emotion that teaches us about our limits. Like all emotions, shame moves us to get our basic needs met.

I always ask myself, would I want someone to do something that wasn't comfortable for them just to please me? And the answer is no.

Women should stop going for the bad guys, stop looking so far when the good ones are right there.

You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.

If a person doesn't like me or doesn't like my game, OK, that's how they feel. Can't be upset with it.

I've had girls that kissed me on the cheek. People get so pumped, and so excited, they don't see you as a person. Which is fair. Sometimes, I don't see people as people. But at the end of the day, you can't put your hands on me unless I hug you first.

I will not be touched if someone says, 'I do not love you.' You have the right. You do not have to love me.

The prerequisite to loving others is to love yourself. If you don't have a healthy respect for who you are, and if you don't learn to accept yourself faults and all, you will never be able to properly love other people.

The truth is people are very nice. The other truth is, it's very annoying to be constantly interrupted. I don't love myself enough to want to share myself with everybody.

The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.

I want people to like me but not at my expense.

If you spend your life sparing people’s feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can’t distinguish what should be respected in them.

I cannot change another person. I let others be who they are, and I simply love who I am.

I want people to like me - but not at my expense. I just learned that there are too many people who are going to have an opinion about me whether I am kind to them or not. I can't control what they're feeling. I am not a yeller and I don't have a temper, but I do want people to do their best. And if someone is a friend and I see that they're doing stuff that is not helping them grow, I will make it a point to talk to them about it.

I deserve to have boundaries, and my boundaries are respected. I love and honor myself. I am safe. All is well.

You cannot force someone to accept an expression of love. You can only offer it. If it is not accepted, you must respect the other person's decision.

I made my excuses and left, thinking, really, after a certain age, people are just going to do what they're going to do and you're either going to accept them as they are or you're not.

I love making new friends and I respect people for a lot of different reasons.