Henri Nouwen Quotes

Each time we make this shift and choose happiness, we experience a miracle. Our mind shifts from fearful delusions and reconnects to our truth, which is love. Creating these shifts requires a dedicated commitment to choosing love.

I love riding, even if it's just my Vespa. You just zip and do your thing. I find there's a different awareness when I ride; it connects me to my senses and to God.

Happiness is an inside job.

All I can focus on is what I can control and that's being happy. My own happiness.

It's so much easier to be happy. It's so much easier to choose to love the things that you have, instead of always yearning for what you're missing, or what it is that you're imagining you're missing. It is so much more peaceful.

Get yourself out of the way, and let Joy have more space.

Happiness is the best revenge, you know? Just be happy. It's a choice.

A Sufi mystic who had always remained happy was asked.... For seventy years people had watched him, he had never been found sad. One day they asked him, 'What is the secret of your happiness?' He said, 'There is no secret. Every morning when I wake up, I meditate for five minutes and I say to myself, 'Listen, now there are two possibilities: you can be miserable, or you can be blissful. Choose.' And I always choose to be blissful.'

Happiness and love are just a choice away.

Just write the best you can about the things that concern you most. I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.

Don’t worry about things. Don’t push. Just do your work and you’ll survive. The important thing is to have a ball, to be joyful, to be loving and to be explosive. Out of that comes everything and you grow.

At any given moment in your life, you have the choice between love and fear. And that's a choice you make. You make the choice of how you react to events.

A joyful life isn’t about others; it’s about the brightness that is associated with being alive. Your path to it is through anything that replaces thinking with pure flight, pure joy.

Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.

The trick is not how much pain you feel - but how much joy you feel

Happiness is not created as a result of certain conditions. Certain conditions are created as a result of happiness.

You have to take an active role in making yourself happy. That's why I say happiness is a choice. Because you have to choose it.

Everybody in the world is seeking happiness - and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn't depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.

Focus on where you are instead of where you wish you were. The joy will follow.

Our joy does not have to be based on our circumstances.

Only one thing matters: live a good, happy life. Do your heart's bidding, even when it leads you on paths that timid souls would avoid. Even when life is a torment, don't let it harden you.

In every moment we make a decision -- whether conscious or unconscious. Will I choose to open my heart, send love, withhold judgment and thus free myself from fear? Or will I close my heart, project fear instead of extending love, judge others, and thus bind myself to fear? The choice is mine and mine alone.

You have all the tools right now to make this day, this moment, happy. The best of these tools is love.

Happiness lies in the consciousness we have of it.

Happiness is a work of art. Handle with care.