Henri Nouwen

"Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you're not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn't planned or counted on."

"For Jesus, there are no countries to be conquered, no ideologies to be imposed, no people to be dominated. There are only children, women and men to be loved."

"In our production-oriented society, being busy, having an occupation, has become one of the main ways, if not the main way, of identifying ourselves. Without an occupation, not just our economic security but our very identity is endangered."

"Our glory is hidden in our pain, if we allow God to bring the gift of himself in our experience of it."

"Our Western society is showing its technological muscles in ever more threatening ways, but the experience of fear, anxiety and even despair has increased in equal proportion. Indeed, the paradox is that the powerful giants feel as powerless as a new-born babe."

"Solitude is the place where we can connect with profound bonds that are deeper than the emergency bonds of fear and anger."

"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."

"The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection."

"The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised."

"To learn patience is not to rebel against every hardship."

"Waiting is a period of learning. The longer we wait, the more we hear about him for whom we are waiting."

"When we have nothing to cling to as our own and cease thinking of ourselves as people who must defend privileges, we can open ourselves freely to others with the faithful expectation that our strength will manifest itself in our shared weakness."