Irene > Irene's Quotes

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor.”
― Joseph Campbell

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
― Joseph Campbell

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
― Joseph Campbell

“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.”
― Joseph Campbell

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
― Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

“Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

“Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”
― Joseph Campbell

“If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.”
― Joseph Campbell

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”
― Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

“You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.”
― Joseph Campbell

“If you are falling....dive.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.”
― Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology

“Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Regrets are illuminations come too late.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

“Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold.”
― Joseph Campbell

“As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you. Don't bother to brush it off.
Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance.
Having a sense of humor saves you.”
― Joseph Campbell

“The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
― Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life | Fiftieth Anniversary Edition

“The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“when the imitation of Christ does not mean to live a life like Christ, but to live your life as authentically as Christ lived his, then there are many ways and forms in which a man can be a Christian.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer

“Through compassion it is possible to recognize that the craving for love that people feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses. Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends' eyes and our hatred in their bitter mouths. When they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they give life, we know that we can do the same. For a compassionate person nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer

“The inward man is faced with a new and often dramatic task: He must come to terms with the inner tremendum. Since the God 'out there' or 'up there' is more or less dissolved in the many secular structures, the God within asks attention as never before. And just as the God outside could be experienced not only as a loving father but also as a horrible demon, the God within can be not only the source of a new creative life but also the cause of a chaotic confusion.
The greatest complaint of the Spanish mystics St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross was that they lacked a spiritual guide to lead them along the right paths and enable them to distinguish between creative and destructive spirits. We hardly need emphasize how dangerous the experimentation with the interior life can be. Drugs as well as different concentration practices and withdrawal into the self often do more harm than good. On the other hand it also is becoming obvious that those who avoid the painful encounter with the unseen are doomed to live a supercilious, boring and superficial life.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer

“when two people have become present to each other, the waiting of one must be able to cross the narrow line between the living or dying of the other.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer

“The beginning and the end of all Christian leadership is to give your life for others.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“experience tells us that we can only love because we are born out of love, that we can only give because our life is a gift, and that we can only make others free because we are set free by Him whose heart is greater than ours. When we have found the anchor places for our lives in our own center, we can be free to let others enter into the space created for them and allow them to dance their own dance, sing their own song and speak their own language without fear.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“preaching means more than handing over a tradition; it is rather the careful and sensitive articulation of what is happening in the community”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Who can save a child from a burning house without taking the risk of being hurt by the flames? Who can listen to a story of loneliness and despair without taking the risk of experiencing similar pains in his own heart and even losing his precious peace of mind? In short: “Who can take away suffering without entering it?”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer