Henri Nouwen Quotes

People who do not see the terrible things therefore do not see the beautiful things, either.

There's a million different ways you can look at a moment.

Sometimes, hindsight is 20/20. Sometimes it takes another situation to kind of make you look back at a different situation and really see how good you had it, you know?

Only when one is able to grasp wideness can one possess it.

I love that perhaps we don't see the things that are there because we have no yardstick to see things by, to compare them.

You know, now it's sinking in. It's taken me a long time to realize - and it is sinking in - how important this book is. And I have a certain distance now. I've done it such a long time ago.

I wanted to write about looking at the world, so it's more about helping people, or persuading people, to see what is around us; both the marvellous and the terrible.

If you don't know about it, you can't get it.

Ignorant men don't know what good they hold in their hands until they've flung it away.

Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.

Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.

It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value.

To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery.

I don't think a lot of people really know what goes into something that they see.

You only recognize how good something is if you've been through the bad.

The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.

I had seen the great, but I had not seen the small.

Were one merely to seek information, one should inquire of the man who hates, but if one wishes to know what truly is, one better ask the one who loves.

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

Dear sisters and brothers, we realize the importance of light when we see darkness.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Once I opened my eyes to the realities of life, I couldn't close them.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

Knowing is not understanding. There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.