Top 200 Enlightenment Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.”

— Alan Watts

52. “On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do.”

— Eckhart Tolle

53. “Stillness is the only thing in this world that has no form. But then, it is not really a thing, and it is not of this world.”

— Eckhart Tolle

54. “If you can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves. The recognition of illusion is also its ending. Its survival depends on your mistaking it for reality.”

— Eckhart Tolle

55. “Few cross over the river. Most are stranded on this side. On the riverbank they run up and down. But the wise man, following the way, Crosses over, beyond the reach of death. He leaves the dark way For the way of light.”

— Buddha

56. “Presence is a state of inner spaciousness.”

— Eckhart Tolle

57. “Do not take life’s experiences too seriously. For in reality they are nothing but dream experiences. Play your part in life, but never forget that it is only a role.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

58. “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

59. “For those who are ready the door to the deathless state is open. If you have ears give up the conditions that bind you and enter in.”

— Buddha

60. “You are already that which you seek.”

— Ramana Maharshi

61. “Never in this world can hatred be stilled by hatred; it will be stifled by non-hatred – this is the law Eternal.”

— Buddha

62. “So love is the recognition of oneness in a world of duality. This is the birth of God into the world of form. Love makes the world less worldly, less dense, more transparent to the divine dimension, the light of consciousness itself.”

— Eckhart Tolle

63. “If you are in a state of intense presence you are free of thought, yet highly alert. If your conscious attention sinks below a certain level, thought rushes in, the mental noise returns, stillness is lost, you’re back in time.”

— Eckhart Tolle

64. “The mind has to be empty to see clearly.”

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

65. “Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego.”

— Eckhart Tolle

66. “To commune daily with God in deep meditation, and to carry His love and guidance with you into all your dutiful activities, is the way that leads to permanent peace and happiness.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

67. “Pleasure and pain are only aspects of the mind. Our essential nature is happiness.”

— Ramana Maharshi

68. “Become conscious of being conscious.”

— Eckhart Tolle

69. “How to get rid of the mind? Is it the mind that wants to kill itself? The mind cannot kill itself. So your business is to find the real nature of the mind. Then you will know that there is no mind. When the Self is sought, the mind is nowhere. Abiding in the Self, one need not worry about the mind.”

— Ramana Maharshi

70. “Give up all ideas about yourself and simply be.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

71. “Let go of what has passed. Let go of what may come. Let go of what is happening now. Don’t try to figure anything out. Don’t try to make anything happen. Relax, right now, and rest.”

— Tilopa

72. “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.”

— Immanuel Kant

73. “The Self alone exists. When you try to trace the ego, which is the basis of the perception of the world and everything else, you find the ego does not exist at all and neither does all this creation that you see.”

— Ramana Maharshi

74. “Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think.”

— Buddha

75. “Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is something inside to be realized.”

— Osho

76. “As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm, As is the atom, so is the universe, As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind.”

— Deepak Chopra

77. “I am that by which I know ‘I am’”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

78. “Realisation is not acquisition of anything new nor is it a new faculty. It is only removal of all camouflage.”

— Ramana Maharshi

79. “Drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the wise man, gathering it little by little, fills himself with good.”

— Buddha

80. “Be at least as interested in what goes on inside you as what happens outside. If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.”

— Eckhart Tolle

81. “Drop the idea of becoming someone, because you are already a masterpiece. You cannot be improved. You have only to come to it, to know it, to realize it.”

— Osho

82. “Whereas the notion of purpose before was always associated with future, there is now a deeper purpose that can only be found in the present, through denial of time.”

— Eckhart Tolle

83. “The thing to do is to concentrate on the seer and not on the seen, not on the objects, but on the Light which reveals them.”

— Ramana Maharshi

84. “There is nothing higher than reason.”

— Immanuel Kant

85. “You are all searching for the silence of the mountain. But you’re looking for something outside. This silence is accessible to you right now, inside the center of your own being.”

— Ramana Maharshi

86. “Self-inquiry is the process and the goal also. ‘I am’ is the goal and the final reality. To hold to it with effort is self-inquiry. When spontaneous and natural it is realization.”

— Ramana Maharshi

87. “You can be very much aware that when you are stressed, it always is a sign you have lost the present moment. So, you can choose to re-enter the present moment.”

— Eckhart Tolle

88. “Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.”

— Eckhart Tolle

89. “Whatever happens, happens to you by you, through you; you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

90. “If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without.”

— Eckhart Tolle

91. “What comes, will go. What is found, will be lost again. But what you are is beyond coming and going and beyond description.”

— Rumi

92. “It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy, truth liberates.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

93. “The inquiry “who am I” turns the mind inward and makes it calm.”

— Ramana Maharshi

94. “There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

95. “All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.”

— Eckhart Tolle

96. “Seek spiritual riches within. What you are is much greater than anyone or anything else you have ever yearned for.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

97. “The world is not outside you.”

— Ramana Maharshi

98. “Your life, all of your life, is your path to awakening. By resisting or not dealing with its challenges, you stay asleep to Reality. Pay attention to what life is trying to reveal to you. Say yes to its fierce, ruthless, and loving grace.”

— Adyashanti

99. “All you need to know and observe in yourself is this: Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that’s the ego in you.”

— Eckhart Tolle

100. “The present moment holds the key to liberation. But you cannot find the present moment as long as you are your mind.”

— Eckhart Tolle