Deep in our hearts there is a call to live in communion with others, a call to love, to create, to risk. But there is also that radical feeling of our poverty when faced with human misery. I am afraid to give myself. I have constructed a world of security around me..so many so-called interests which keep me from communing with others.. I want to, but cannot. So many things seem to prevent me from loving and I feel them in my inmost being..so many defences and fears. I risk losing hope. I risk entering into a world of sadness and I begin to doubt myself. I have doubts about others. I doubt the value of my presence. I doubt everything. This is our human condition. We want so much but we feel incapable. We believe in love but where is it? There are so many obstacles to break through within ourselves in order to become free and to become present to others; to their misery and to their person. Our hope is to become freer each day in order to accept others, to be fully present to them. That is our hope. It is only in that way we will be able to give life. Come, Holy Spirit, give us hearts of peace and warmth which can serve as a refuge for those who suffer. Come, help us to be present one to another. . Jean Vanier
It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.
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Jane Austen
If I had a flower for every time I thought of you... I could walk through my garden forever.
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Alfred Tennyson
You are my best friend as well as my lover, and I do not know which side of you I enjoy the most. I treasure each side, just as I have treasured our life together.
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Nicholas Sparks
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grassthe world is too full to talk about.
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Jalaluddin Rumi
More Quotes By Jean Vanier
We can be seduced...by powerful political groups that promise more wealth and lower taxes. Those with power can use clever, psychological tricks and play upon our weaknesses and brokenness in order to attract us to their way of thinking. We can be manipulated into illusion.
[Happiness] comes when we choose to be who we are, to be ourselves, at this present moment in our lives.
Look at your own povertywelcome itcherish itdon't be afraidshare your deathbecause thus you will share your love and your life
I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.
The friend of time doesn't spend all day saying: 'I haven't got time.' He doesn't fight with time. He accepts it and cherishes it.
