A Quote by Henri Nouwen

'How much longer will I live?'... Only one thing seems clear to me. Every day should be well-lived. What a simple truth! Still, it is worthy of my attention. — © Henri Nouwen
'How much longer will I live?'... Only one thing seems clear to me. Every day should be well-lived. What a simple truth! Still, it is worthy of my attention.
You should give up.' 'Why?' 'For one thing, you'll live longer.' 'Oh, you don't live longer. It just seems longer.
On a clear day, rise and look around you, and you'll see who you are. On a clear day, how it will astound you That the glow of your feelings outshines every star. You will follow every mountain, sea and shore, You will see from far and near a world you've never seen before. On a clear day, on a clear day, you can see forever, and ever, and ever more.
Remember one very fundamental thing about life: Any experience that has not been lived will hang around you, will persist: "Finish me! Live me! Complete me!" There is an intrinsic quality in every experience that it tends and wants to be finished, completed. Once completed, it evaporates; incomplete, it persists, it tortures you, it haunts you, it attracts your attention. It says, "What are you going to do about me? I am still incomplete - fulfill me!"
As we live and as we are, Simplicity - with a capital "S" - is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.
Life is worthy of the name only when it reflects Reality in action. No university will teach you how to live so that when the time of dying comes, you can say: I lived well I do not need to live again. Most of us die wishing we could live again. So many mistakes committed, so much left undone. Most of the people vegetate, but do not live. They merely gather experience and enrich their memory. But experience is the denial of Reality, which is neither sensory nor conceptual, neither of the body, nor of the mind, though it includes and transcends both.
At the end of the day - the long day of your life - as people stand around your grave no one will talk about how big your house was, or how many cars you owned, or your boat or plane... they will only talk about ONE thing and ONE thing ONLY: LOVE! How much you loved them and how much they loved you. So the goal then is to live a life of love. That is all.
When you are sixteen you do not know what your parents know, or much of what they understand, and less of what's in their hearts. This can save you from becoming an adult too early, save your life from becoming only theirs lived over again--which is a loss. But to shield yourself--as I didn't do--seems to be an even greater error, since what's lost is the truth of your parents' life and what you should think about it, and beyond that, how you should estimate the world you are about to live in.
You can't believe how hard it is for people to be simple, how much they fear being simple. They worry that if they're simple, people will think they're simpleminded. In reality, of course, it's just the reverse. Clear, tough-minded people are the most simple.
Pain, no matter how prolonged it seems to be, is just a short-lived thing that one day, in one way or another, we will overcome.
I wondered why I hadn't loved that day more, why I hadn't savored every bit of it...why I hadn't known how good it was to live so normally, so everyday. But you only know that, I suppose, after it's not normal and every day any longer.
How much is enough? How much does anyone require? Can I be both kind and tough? Can I put faith before desire? Right now, for all time, I vow to try . . . I volunteer to be simple, I volunteer to love, Every living thing like a mountain stream that flows out o'er the land. I volunteer for the journey from here to heaven's gate. I will do my part I place my heart in Your gracious hands . . . How then shall we live? Let us live lightly as a feather. How much shall we give? Let us give everything, together One heart, one mind, all humankind... I volunteer.
O Time and change! - with hair as gray as was my sire's that winter day, how strange it seems, with so much gone of life and love, to still live on!
I still don't even know if the sheriff will let me see him. And suppose he did; what then? What do I say to him? Do I know what a man is? Do I know how a man is supposed to die? I'm still trying to find out how a man should live. Am I supposed to tell someone how to die who has never lived?
It's like he has emotional amnesia... I think you have to accept that the person you knew isn't there at the moment. I was witness to how much he loved you. I have the photos. This isn't the person we knew. I don't recognize this person. He's shed his skin." Her heart is broken too. She has to say the thing that will give me back my life. She draws on every reserve. I see how much it hurts her and it hurts me too. I came from her joy and her pain, I lived in it and I live in it now.
If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.
We all know the principle that the polluter pays? Well one day I got to wondering why it is that the polluter seems to get away with it quite so often! Then it occurred to me that if the polluter is going to pay, somebody needs to tell him how much. The proper valuation of natural capital will enable us to say how much.
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