Jean Vanier - Love Quotes

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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
Every human being is a mixture of light and darkness, trust and fear, love and hate.

Jean Vanier
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
The cry for love and communion and for recognition that rises from the hearts of people in need reveals the fountain of love in us and our capacity to give life.

Jean Vanier
There is nothing stronger than a heart which loves and is freely given.

Jean Vanier
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
Each person with his or her history of being accepted or rejected, with his or her past history of inner pain and difficulties in relationships, is different. But in each one there is a yearning for communion and belonging, but at the same time a fear of it. Love is what we most want, yet it is what we fear the most.

Jean Vanier
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
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
A Christian community should do as Jesus did: propose and not impose. Its attraction must lie in the radiance cast by the love of brothers.

Jean Vanier
Somewhere, the deepest desire for us all is to be appreciated, to be loved, to be seen as somebody of value. But not just seen — and Aristotle makes a difference between being admired and being loved. When you admire people, you put them on pedestals. When you love people, you want to be together. So really, the first meeting I had with people with disabilities, what touched me was their cry for relationship.

Jean Vanier
Communion is mutual trust, mutual belonging; it is the to-and-fro movement of love between two people where each one gives and each one receives. Communion is not a fixed state, it is an...

Jean Vanier
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
Peace is the fruit of love, a love that is also justice. But to grow in love requires work — hard work. And it can bring pain because it implies loss — loss of the certitudes, comforts, and hurts that shelter and define us.

Jean Vanier
I remember that throughout history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it always...whenever you are in doubt that that is God's way - the way the world is meant to be. Think of that and then try to do His way.

Jean Vanier
What people with disabilities want is to relate. This is something unique. It makes people who are closed up in the head become human. The wonderful thing about people with disabilities is that when someone important comes, they don't care. They care about the relationship. So they have a healing power, a healing power of love.

Jean Vanier
We all know well that we can do things for others and in the process crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of doing things by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them.

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

Jean Vanier
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
To love someone is to show to them their beauty, their worth and their importance.

Jean Vanier
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
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
Love is to recognize that the other person is a person, is precious, is important and has value.. Each one has a gift to bring to others. Each one has his or her mission in the larger family of humanity. Each one reveals the secret face of God.

Jean Vanier
Stop looking for peace. Give yourselves where you are. Stop looking at yourselves, look instead at your brothers and sisters in need. Ask how you can better love your brothers and sisters. Then you will find peace.

Jean Vanier
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