Quotes about Desire
When I demand from others what only God can give, I experience pain.
- Henri Nouwen
This kind of attention to the eternal in our every day does not strain our hearts. It does not major on brawny striving. It has more to do with attention to God than perfection, with a desire to see God even amid our great weakness.
- Henri Nouwen
When I fail, I feel jealous or resentful of these others. When I succeed, I worry that others will be jealous or resentful of me. I become suspicious or defensive and increasingly afraid that I won't get what I so much desire or will lose what I already have. Caught
- Henri Nouwen
Whether I am the younger son or the elder son, God's only desire is to bring me home.
- Henri Nouwen
The problem, however, is that we not only want our freedom but also fear it.
- Henri Nouwen
Wouldn't it be good to increase God's joy by letting God find me and carry me home and celebrate my return with the angels? Wouldn't it be wonderful to make God smile by giving God the chance to find me and love me lavishly? Questions like these raise a real issue: that of my own self-concept. Can I accept that I am worth looking for? Do I believe that there is a real desire in God to simply be with me?
- Henri Nouwen
There is a deep hole in your being, like an abyss. You will never succeed in filling that hole, because your needs are inexhaustible. You have to work around it so that gradually the abyss closes.
- Henri Nouwen
I leave home every time I lose faith in the voice that calls me the Beloved and follow the voices that offer a great variety of ways to win the love I so much desire.
- Henri Nouwen
When we live with hope we do not get tangled up with concerns for how our wishes will be fulfilled. So, too, our prayers are not directed toward the gift, but toward the one who gives it. Our prayers might still contain just as many desires, but ultimately it is not a question of having a wish come true but of expressing an unlimited faith in the giver of all good things. You wish that…but you hope in….
- Henri Nouwen
There are two realities to which you must cling. First, God has promised that you will receive the love you have been searching for. And second, God is faithful to that promise. So stop wandering around. Instead, come home and trust that God will bring you what you need. Your whole life you have been running about, seeking the love you desire. Now it is time to end that search. Trust that God will give you that all-fulfilling love and will give it in a human way.
- Henri Nouwen
The lostness of the resentful "saint" is so hard to reach precisely because it is so closely wedded to the desire to be good and virtuous.
- Henri Nouwen
Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be. (Finding My Way Home)
- Henri Nouwen