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Quotes about Existence

The revolutionary thinking that God loves me as I am and not as I should be requires radical rethinking and profound emotional readjustment. Small wonder that the late spiritual giant Basil Hume of London, England, claimed that Christians find it easier to believe that God exists than that God loves them.
- Brennan Manning
I kept running around it in large or small circles, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved. Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence.
- Henri Nouwen
Our lives are unique stones in the mosaic of human existence -- priceless and irreplaceable.
- Henri Nouwen
Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbor is really our fellow man.
- Henri Nouwen
Not being welcome is your greatest fear. It connects with your birth fear, your fear of not being welcome in this life, and your death fear, your fear of not being welcome in the life after this. It is the deep-seated fear that it would have been better if you had not lived.
- Henri Nouwen
Drinking the cup of life is fully appropriating and internalizing our own unique existence, with all its sorrows and joys. It is not easy to do this. For a long time we might not feel capable of accepting our own life; we might keep fighting for a better or at least a different life.
- Henri Nouwen
I am a good person, known and cherished by the One who brought me to my existence. Before I was hurt, I was a beloved.
- Henri Nouwen
Being alive means being loved.
- Henri Nouwen
Although after many years of living we often feel more lonely, hostile and filled with illusions than when we had hardly a past to reflect upon, we also know better than before that all these pains have deepened and sharpened our urge to reach out to a solitary, hospitable and prayerful mode of existence.
- Henri Nouwen
I know now that I have to speak from eternity into time, from the lasting joy into the passing realities of our short existence in this world, from the house of love into the houses of fear, from God's abode into the dwellings of human beings.
- Henri Nouwen
Temptations and struggles will remain to the end of our lives, but with a pure heart we will be restful even in the midst of a restless existence.
- Henri Nouwen
Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection....Self rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved. Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.
- Henri Nouwen