Top 450 Nhat Hanh Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Breathing in, I know I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.”

— Nhat Hanh

52. “Compassion is a verb.”

— Nhat Hanh

53. “Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.”

— Nhat Hanh

54. “When you look deeply into your anger, you will see that the person you call your enemy is also suffering. As soon as you see that, the capacity of accepting and having compassion for them is there.”

— Nhat Hanh

55. “If you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything.”

— Nhat Hanh

56. “If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.”

— Nhat Hanh

57. “In Buddhism, mindfulness is the key. Mindfulness is the energy that sheds light on all things and all activities, producing the power of concentration, bringing forth deep insight and awakening. Mindfulness is the base of Buddhist practice.”

— Nhat Hanh

58. “I have lost my smile, but don’t worry. The dandelion has it.”

— Nhat Hanh

59. “Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.”

— Nhat Hanh

60. “When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?”

— Nhat Hanh

61. “Live your daily life in a way that you never lose yourself.”

— Nhat Hanh

62. “What we most need to do is to hear within us the sound of the Earth crying.”

— Nhat Hanh

63. “Every morning, when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift! We have the capacity to live in a way that these twenty-four hours will bring peace, joy, and happiness to ourselves and others.”

— Nhat Hanh

64. “Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.”

— Nhat Hanh

65. “Silence is essential. We need silence just as much as we need air, just as much as plants need light. If our minds are crowded with words and thoughts, there is no space for us.”

— Nhat Hanh

66. “The present moment is the only moment available to us and it is the door to all other moments.”

— Nhat Hanh

67. “If love is in our hearts, every thought, word, and deed can bring about a miracle. Because understanding is the very foundation of love, words and actions that emerge from our love are always helpful.”

— Nhat Hanh

68. “You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer.”

— Nhat Hanh

69. “Life is a miracle, and being aware of simply this can already make us very happy.”

— Nhat Hanh

70. “The buddha called suffering a holy truth, because our suffering has the capacity of showing us the path to liberation. Embrace your suffering and let it reveal to you the way to peace.”

— Nhat Hanh

71. “If you are motivated by loving kindness and compassion, there are many ways to bring happiness to others right now, starting with kind speech.”

— Nhat Hanh

72. “When we give ourselves the chance to let go of all our tension, the body’s natural capacity to heal itself can begin to work.”

— Nhat Hanh

73. “With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.”

— Nhat Hanh

74. “When we look deeply into the heart of a flower, we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth, and everything else in the cosmos in it. Without clouds there could be no rain, and without rain there would be no flower.”

— Nhat Hanh

75. “Words can travel thousands of miles. May my words create mutual understanding and love. May they be as beautiful as gems, as lovely as flowers.”

— Nhat Hanh

76. “I promise myself that I will enjoy every minute of the day that is given me to live.”

— Nhat Hanh

77. “My actions are my only true belongings.”

— Nhat Hanh

78. “You have to do it by yourself. You can not do it alone.”

— Nhat Hanh

79. “No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.”

— Nhat Hanh

80. “Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy and serenity.”

— Nhat Hanh

81. “While washing dishes one should be washing the dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing dishes.”

— Nhat Hanh

82. “In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.”

— Nhat Hanh

83. “To take care of the environment, we must first take care of the environmentalist.”

— Nhat Hanh

84. “We have to learn to die in every moment in order to be fully alive.”

— Nhat Hanh

85. “Your true home is in the here and the now.”

— Nhat Hanh

86. “To be spiritual means to be solid, calm, and peaceful and to be able to look deeply inside and around us.”

— Nhat Hanh

87. “Be angry, it’s okay. To be angry, that is very human. And to learn how to smile at your anger and make peace with your anger is very nice.”

— Nhat Hanh

88. “Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.”

— Nhat Hanh

89. “The amount of happiness that you have depends on the amount of freedom you have in your heart.”

— Nhat Hanh

90. “The present moment contains past and future. The secret of transformation, is in the way we handle this very moment.”

— Nhat Hanh

91. “Enlightenment for a wave is the moment the wave realizes it is water. At that moment, all fear of death disappears.”

— Nhat Hanh

92. “Anxiety is the illness of our age. We worry about ourselves, our family, our friends, our work, and our state of the world. If we allow worry to fill our hearts, sooner or later we will get sick.”

— Nhat Hanh

93. “We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.”

— Nhat Hanh

94. “Everything inside and around us wants to reflect itself in us. We don’t have to go anywhere to obtain the truth. We only need to be still and things will reveal themselves in the still water of our heart.”

— Nhat Hanh

95. “If you can feel that Mother Earth is in you, and you are Mother Earth, then you are not any longer afraid to die because the earth is not dying. Like a wave appears and disappears and appears again.”

— Nhat Hanh

96. “If you get angry easily, it may be because the seed of anger in you has been watered frequently over many years, and unfortunately you have allowed it or even encouraged it to be watered.”

— Nhat Hanh

97. “There is no birth, there is no death; there is no coming, there is no going; there is no same, there is no different; there is no permanent self, there is no annihilation. We only think there is.”

— Nhat Hanh

98. “By eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet.”

— Nhat Hanh

99. “A bodhisattva doesn’t have to be perfect. Anyone who is aware of what is happening and who tries to wake up other people is a bodhisattva. We are all bodhisattvas, doing our best.”

— Nhat Hanh

100. “We inter-breath with the rain forests, we drink from the oceans. They are part of our own body.”

— Nhat Hanh