Henri Nouwen Quotes

If you do not transform your pain, you will always transmit it.

Allowing the pain of personal growth to be a crucible of your spirit-the alchemical grail through which the metal of your former self turns into gold-is one of the highest callings of life. Pain can burn you up and destroy you, or burn you up and redeem you. It can deliver you to an entrenched despair, or deliver you to your higher self. At midlife we decide, consciously or unconsciously, the path of the victim or the path of the phoenix when it is rising up at last.

Emotional discomfort, when accepted, rises, crests and falls in a series of waves. Each wave washes a part of us away and deposits treasures we never imagined. Out goes naivete, in comes wisdom; out goes anger, in comes discernment; out goes despair, in comes kindness. No one would call it easy, but the rhythm of emotional pain that we learn to tolerate is natural, constructive and expansive... The pain leaves you healthier than it found you.

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.

Those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. LOVE is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.

Your present negative beliefs were formed by thought PLUS feelings. Generate enough emotion, or deep feeling and your new thoughts and ideas will cancel them out.

That hurt we embrace becomes joy. Call it to your arms where it can change.

When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness. I'm trying for that. But I'm also trying for the language. I'm trying to see how it can really sound.

My heart's dark, but it's rising. I'm pulling all the faith I can see.

No matter how much bullying they inflict on my body, as long as I have this hope, I can endure any pain.

How great it is when we come to know that times of disappointment can be followed by joy; that guilt over falling short of our ideals can be replaced by pride in doing all that we can; and that anger can be channeled into creative achievements... and into dreams that we can make come true.

I can't heal your pain but I can see it. And you don't have to be lost. Not forever.

Sometimes in our lives we all have pain. We all have sorrow. But if we are wise we know that there's always tomorrow.

I teach the art of turning anguish into delight.

When I planted my pain in the field of patience it bore fruit of happiness.

As we have said, robust souls are sometimes almost, but not entirely, overthrown by strokes of misfortune....Despair has steps leading upward. From total depression we rise to despondency, from despondency to affliction, from affliction to melancholy. Melancholy is a twilight state in which suffering transmutes into a somber joy....Melancholy is the enjoyment of being sad.

Your pain has a purpose. Your problems, struggles, heartaches, and hassles cooperate toward one end-the glory of God.

Don't be sad, don't be angry, if life deceives you! Submit to your grief - your time for joy will come, believe me.

The whole purpose of letting pain be pain is this: to let go of pain. By entering into it, we see that we are strong enough and capable enough to move through it. We find out that it ultimately has a gift for us.

Art is a way to get strength from something that is life-affirming. It can be quite violent and still be life-affirming.

There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.' No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster.

All those horrible, traumatic years I spent as a kid became what I draw from creatively today.

From bitter searching of the heart, quickened with passion and with pain we rise to play a greater part this is the faith from which we start.

The greatest change to go from average to fortune is not so much an increase in knowledge, but rather, a change in our emotions about achieving our goals.

The way to reduce the pain which you associate with earthly experiences and events-both yours and those of others-is to change the way you behold them.