Vanier Quotes

#1. Growth begins when we begin to accept our own weakness.

Jean Vanier

#2. When your mind cannot find its way out of its current spectrum of reality, your heart will always guide you along the the path you are seeking. Trust it.

L.J. Vanier

#3. Your soul is like a flower and your spirit is the seed.
As your spirit grows, the soul blossoms

L.J. Vanier

#4. In time you will see that you were exactly where you were supposed to be.

L.J. Vanier

#5. Each person is sacred, no matter what his or her culture, religion, handicap, or fragility. Each person is created in God's image; each one has a heart, a capacity to love and to be loved.

Jean Vanier

#6. Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don't need a lot of money to be happy
in fact, the opposite.

Jean Vanier

#7. We work for peace every time we exercise authority with wisdom and authentic love.

Jean Vanier

#8. Righteousness doesn't mean being right. It means showing love, compassion and understanding no matter what you think is right.

L.J. Vanier

#9. Look at your own poverty
welcome it
cherish it
don't be afraid
share your death
because thus you will share your love and your life

Jean Vanier

#10. There is nothing stronger than a heart which loves and is freely given.

Jean Vanier

#11. Community means caring: caring for people. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says: "He who loves community destroys community; he who loves the brethren builds community." A community is not an abstract ideal.

Jean Vanier

#12. We don't know what to do with our own pain, so what to do with the pain of others? We don't know what to do with our own weakness except hide it or pretend it doesn't exist. So how can we welcome fully the weakness of another if we haven't welcomed our own weakness?

Jean Vanier

#13. Spiritual enlightenment is the ultimate goal for all of humanity, not just a chosen few. Be helpful, not hurtful

L.J. Vanier

#14. The awakening is finally realizing that you are a part of God, like a single cell that finally sees it is a part of you.

L.J. Vanier

#15. Self worth can only be measured by you, set the bar high

L.J. Vanier

#16. So we need places, laboratories, the creation of places which could be each one of our homes, where we invite people who are different, and we listen to each other, people of different class groups.

Jean Vanier

#17. Our danger is to think that happiness will come from outside of us, from the things we possess or the power of our group, and not from within us, from the inner sanctuary of our being.

Jean Vanier

#18. It is only when we stand up, with all our failings and sufferings, and try to support others rather than withdraw into ourselves, that we can fully live the life of community.

Jean Vanier

#19. 'Going home' is a journey to the heart of who we are, a place where we can be ourselves and welcome the reality of our beauty and our pain. From this acceptance of ourselves, we can accept others as they are and we can see our common humanity.

Jean Vanier

#20. Put on light-coloured clothes and some perfume, take care of your body and do everything you can to fight against the forces of darkness. It is not an easy struggle, but it is worthwhile.

Jean Vanier

#21. But let us not put our sights too high. We do not have to be saviours of the world! We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time. (163)

Jean Vanier

#22. We will only stay in community if we have gone through the passage from choosing community to knowing that we have been chosen for community.

Jean Vanier

#23. The language of elitism smells bad! It is not healthy to believe that we are the only ones to have captured truth and even less healthy to condemn others.

Jean Vanier

#24. A tension or difficulty can signal the approach of a new grace of God. But it has to be looked at wisely and humanly.

Jean Vanier

#25. Every child, every person needs to know that they are a source of joy; every child, every person, needs to be celebrated. Only when all of our weaknesses are accepted as part of our humanity can our negative, broken self-images be transformed.

Jean Vanier

#26. Jesus is the starving, the parched, the prisoner, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the dying. Jesus is the oppressed, the poor. To live with Jesus is to live with the poor. To live with the poor is to live with Jesus.

Jean Vanier

#27. All of us have a secret desire to be seen as saints, heroes, martyrs. We are afraid to be children, to be ourselves.

Jean Vanier

#28. An ethics of desire is good news for those of us who have become allergic to an ethics of law.

Jean Vanier

#29. The sky is not the limit. Your mind is.

L.J. Vanier

#30. Weakness, recognized, accepted, and offered, is at the heart of belonging, so it is at the heart of communion with another.

Jean Vanier

#31. The word "paracleta" means "the one who answers the cry." It is not possible to receive the Spirit unless we cry out, and unless that cry surges up from the consciousness of our own wound, our pain, and our brokenness.

Jean Vanier

#32. If we are to grow in love, the prisons of our egoism must be unlocked. This implies suffering, constant effort and repeated choices.

Jean Vanier

#33. In any case, community is not about perfect people. It is about people who are bonded to each other, each of whom is a mixture of good and bad, darkness and light, love and hate.

Jean Vanier

#34. Power always has a direction. It is always downward, towards the weak but power is often confused with what is right

Jean Vanier

#35. A community that is growing rich and seeks only to defend its goods and its reputation is dying. It has ceased to grow in love. A community is alive when it is poor and its members feel they have to work together and remain united, if only to ensure that they can all eat tomorrow!

Jean Vanier

#36. Like a butterfly burrowing from its chrysalis, so shall you find your wings, if you only take the time to find yourself.

L.J. Vanier

#37. Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness

Jean Vanier

#38. I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.

Jean Vanier

#39. Life is a succession of crises and moments when we have to rediscover who we are and what we really want.

Jean Vanier

#40. The life you have built around you is a reflection of what is within you. If you don't like what you see, go inside.

L.J. Vanier

#41. The strong need the weak as much as the weak need the strong

Jean Vanier

#42. Avoid the poison in your life that brings you turmoil.

Jean Vanier

#43. A community which refuses to welcome - whether through fear, weariness, insecurity, a desire to cling to comfort, or just because it is fed up with visitors - is dying spiritually.

Jean Vanier

#44. People are longing to rediscover true community. We have had enough of loneliness, independence and competition.

Jean Vanier

#45. People cannot accept their own evil if they do not at the same time feel loved, respected and trusted.

Jean Vanier

#46. When you learn how to be alone you'll discover the difference between alone and lonely.

L.J. Vanier

#47. When we love and respect people, revealing to them their value, they can begin to come out from behind the walls that protect them.

Jean Vanier

#48. We are not called by God to do extraordinary things, but to do ordinary things with extraordinary love.

Jean Vanier

#49. The belly laugh is the best way to evacuate anguish.

Jean Vanier

#50. To love someone is to show to them their beauty, their worth and their importance.

Jean Vanier

#51. Death is an illusion, life is a dream and you are the creator of your own imagination.

L.J. Vanier

#52. To reveal someone's beauty is to reveal their value by giving them time, attention, and tenderness. To love is not just to do something for them but to reveal to them their own uniqueness, to tell them that they are special and worthy of attention.

Jean Vanier

#53. The Key to Abundance is Acceptance. The more you expect the less you accept.

L.J. Vanier

#54. Many people are good at talking about what they are doing, but in fact do little. Others do a lot but don't talk about it; they are the ones who make a community live.

Jean Vanier

#55. Prayer is like a secret garden made up of silence and rest and inwardness. But there are a thousand and one doors into this garden and we all have to find our own.

Jean Vanier

#56. The more I think I know, I realize, the more that is left unknown and that's the best part.

L.J. Vanier

#57. The weak and the poor are for us a source of unity. Jesus came into the world to change and transform society from a "pyramid" in which the strong and clever dominate at the top, into a "body", where each member of society has a place, is respected and is important.

Jean Vanier

#58. Miracles happen everyday, you just need to be looking the right way.

L.J. Vanier

#59. Let go of the attachment, keep the lesson

L.J. Vanier

#60. We have to remind ourselves constantly that we are not saviours. We are simply a tiny sign, among thousands of others, that love is possible, that the world is not condemned to a struggle between oppressors and oppressed, that class and racial warfare is not inevitable.

Jean Vanier

#61. Every human activity can be put at the service of the divine and of love. We should all exercise our gift to build community.

Jean Vanier

#62. You already made the choice, you are simply here to walk it.

L.J. Vanier

#63. I believe every act of violence is also a message that needs to be understood. Violence should not be answered just by greater violence but by real understanding. We must ask: 'Where is the violence coming from? What is its meaning?

Jean Vanier

#64. The word love has been so abused by publicity and advertisements that we no longer know really what it means.

Jean Vanier

#65. We are in fact living organisms that exist in a living universe

L.J. Vanier

#66. To move on, you must surrender to your pain and accept it as your own. Only then will you heal inside.

L.J. Vanier

#67. To love someone is not first of all to do things for them,but to reveal to them their beauty and value, to say to them through our attitude: 'You are beautiful. You are important. I trust you. You can trust yourself.'

Jean Vanier

#68. At the heart of the celebration, there are the poor. If [they] are excluded, it is not longer a celebration. [ ... ] A celebration must always be a festival of the poor.

Jean Vanier

#69. People may come to our communities because they want to serve the poor; they will only stay once they have discovered that they themselves are poor.

Jean Vanier

#70. Peace cannot he imposed by politicians or Churches. Peace has to grow within each person if it is to endure. Our society can only be healed when each person in it is healed.

Jean Vanier

#71. Love doesn't mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness.

Jean Vanier

#72. That is the fundamental question; how to trust that she has a heart and that she can, little by little, receive love, be transformed by love, and then give love.

Jean Vanier

#73. A growing community must integrate three elements: a life of silent prayer, a life of service and above all of listening to the poor, and a community life through which all its members can grow in their own gift.

Jean Vanier

#74. Holding onto negativity only hurts you, let it go

L.J. Vanier

#75. In community we are called to care for each member of the community. We can. Choose our friends but we do not choose our brothers and sisters' they are given to us, whether in family or in community." Jean

Jean Vanier

#76. We discover that we are at the same time very insignificant and very important, because each of our actions is preparing the humanity of tomorrow; it is a tiny contribution to the construction of the huge and glorious final humanity

Jean Vanier

#77. It is difficult to make people understand that the ideal doesn't exist, that personal equilibrium and the harmony they dream of come only after years and years of struggle, and that even then they come only as flashes of grace and peace.

Jean Vanier

#78. [Happiness] comes when we choose to be who we are, to be ourselves, at this present moment in our lives.

Jean Vanier

#79. When children are loved, they live off trust; their bides and hearts open up to those who respect and love them, who understand and listen to them.

Jean Vanier

#80. Each person in your life is a teacher, each experience in your life is a lesson. Living is like looking into a mirror, every teacher is you.

L.J. Vanier

#81. Every act of violence is also a message that needs to be understood. (23-24)

Jean Vanier

#82. Upon the dark road you are travelling, do not seek out the light, the illusion, the fallacy and incessant need for all things external. Have no fear, take the darkness as your comfort because you are the light shining in the dark.

You just need to find the spark.

L.J. Vanier

#83. Envy comes from people's ignorance of, or lack of belief, in their own gifts.

Jean Vanier

#84. True peace can rarely be imposed from the outside; it must be born within and between communities through meetings and dialogue and then carried outward.

Jean Vanier

#85. Community is not an ideal; it is people. It is you and I. In community we are called to love people just as they are with their wounds and their gifts, not as we want them to be.

Jean Vanier

#86. 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.

Jean Vanier

#87. To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them.

Jean Vanier

#88. You call it a near death experience, I call it a near life experience!

L.J. Vanier

#89. Community is the place where are revealed all the darkness and anger, jealousies and rivalry hidden in our hearts. Community is a place of pain, because it is a place of loss, a place of conflict, and a place of death. But it is also a place of resurrection.

Jean Vanier

#90. When we judge, we are pushing people away; we are creating a wall, a barrier. When we forgive we are destroying barriers, we come closer to others.

Jean Vanier

#91. Those we most often exclude from the normal life of society, people with disabilities, have profound lessons to teach us

Jean Vanier

#92. To be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefor unloveable. Loneliness is a taste of death. No wonder some people who are desperately lonely lose themselves in mental illness or violence to forget the inner pain.

Jean Vanier

#93. Our humanity is so beautiful, but it needs to be transformed

Jean Vanier

#94. 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.

Jean Vanier

#95. He who is or has been deeply hurt has a RIGHT to be sure he is LOVED.

Jean Vanier

#96. So many in our world today are suffering from isolation, war and oppression. So much money is spent on the construction of armaments. Many, many young people are in despair because of the danger ...

Jean Vanier

#97. This evolution towards a real responsibility for others is sometimes blocked by fear. It is easier to stay on the level of a pleasant way of life in which we keep our freedom and our distance. But that means that we stop growing and shut ourselves up in our own small concerns and pleasures.

Jean Vanier

#98. Loving yourself first sets the tone for your entire life in every relationship.

L.J. Vanier

#99. Community begins in mystery and ends in administration. Leaders move away from people and into paper.

Jean Vanier

#100. Wisdom is something that comes, little by little, through a lot of listening.

Jean Vanier