Top 450 Nhat Hanh Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Live in such a way that you embody true peace, that you can be peace in every moment of your daily life. It is possible for everyone to generate the energy of peace in every step.”

— Nhat Hanh

152. “Without being peace, we cannot do anything for peace. If we cannot smile, we cannot help other people to smile. If we are not peaceful, then we cannot contribute to the peace movement.”

— Nhat Hanh

153. “I am determined to practice deep listening. I am determined to practice loving speech.”

— Nhat Hanh

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

— Nhat Hanh

155. “In Buddhist culture, offering food to the monk symbolizes the action of goodness, and if you have no opportunity to support the practice of spirituality, then you are somehow left in the realm of darkness.”

— Nhat Hanh

156. “I hold my face in my two hands. No, I am not crying. I hold my face in my two hands to keep the loneliness warm – two hands protecting, two hands nourishing, two hands preventing my soul from leaving me in anger.”

— Nhat Hanh

157. “The source of a true smile is an awakened mind. Smiling helps you approach the day with gentleness and understanding.”

— Nhat Hanh

158. “People sacrifice the present for the future. But life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and the now.”

— Nhat Hanh

159. “Sometimes when I am alone in my room in the dark, I practice smiling to myself. I do this to be kind to myself, to take good care of myself, to love myself. I know that if I cannot take care of myself, I cannot take care of anyone else.”

— Nhat Hanh

160. “In every country in the world, killing human beings is condemned. The Buddhist precept of non-killing extends even further, to include all living beings.”

— Nhat Hanh

161. “Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.”

— Nhat Hanh

162. “Take my hand. We will walk. We will only walk. We will enjoy our walk without thinking of arriving anywhere.”

— Nhat Hanh

163. “That is why those who are not capable of being there in the present moment, they don’t really live their life – they live like dead people.”

— Nhat Hanh

164. “Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish.”

— Nhat Hanh

165. “Your presence is a miracle.”

— Nhat Hanh

166. “You have an appointment with life, an appointment that is in the here and now.”

— Nhat Hanh

167. “With mindfulness – the practice of peace – we can begin by working to transform the wars in ourselves. Conscious breathing helps us do this.”

— Nhat Hanh

168. “Even if you only stop and focus on your breathing for a few breaths, or for a minute or two, its very valuable.”

— Nhat Hanh

169. “Each time you take a mindful step you are back in the arms of Mother Earth and are reminded of your true sweet home in the here and now.”

— Nhat Hanh

170. “As we cultivate peace and happiness in ourselves, we also nourish peace and happiness in those we love.”

— Nhat Hanh

171. “I vow to live fully in each moment.”

— Nhat Hanh

172. “Real peace is not in power, money, or weapons, but in deep inner peace.”

— Nhat Hanh

173. “In our consciousness, there are many negative seeds and also many positive seeds. The practice is to avoid watering the negative seeds, and to identify and water the positive seeds every day.”

— Nhat Hanh

174. “If we do not know how to take care of ourselves and to love ourselves, we cannot take care of the people we love. Loving oneself is the foundation for loving another person.”

— Nhat Hanh

175. “To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.”

— Nhat Hanh

176. “In true love, you attain freedom.”

— Nhat Hanh

177. “The greatest of all miracles is to be alive.”

— Nhat Hanh

178. “If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love.”

— Nhat Hanh

179. “People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?”

— Nhat Hanh

180. “We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal, and we don’t allow our minds and hearts to heal.”

— Nhat Hanh

181. “We ourselves need love; it’s not only society, the world outside, that needs love. But we can’t expect that love to come from outside of us. We should ask the question whether we are capable of loving ourselves as well as others.”

— Nhat Hanh

182. “If every day you practice walking and sitting meditation and generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration and peace, you are a cell in the body of the new Buddha. This is not a dream but is possible today and tomorrow.”

— Nhat Hanh

183. “The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.”

— Nhat Hanh

184. “If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.”

— Nhat Hanh

185. “Just breathing and smiling can make us very happy, because when we breathe consciously we recover ourselves completely and encounter life in the present moment.”

— Nhat Hanh

186. “The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”

— Nhat Hanh

187. “They criticize the silent ones. They criticize the talkative ones. They criticize the moderate ones. There is no one in the world who escapes criticism.”

— Nhat Hanh

188. “You are not an observer, you are a participant.”

— Nhat Hanh

189. “Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work.”

— Nhat Hanh

190. “One Buddha is not enough; we need to have many Buddhas.”

— Nhat Hanh

191. “Our appointment with life is in the present moment. If we do not have peace and joy right now, when will we have peace and joy?”

— Nhat Hanh

192. “Breath is aligned with both body and mind and it alone can bring them together.”

— Nhat Hanh

193. “Usually when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas. If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct. If it is not, we say it is incorrect. In either case, we learn nothing.”

— Nhat Hanh

194. “When we have peace, then we have a chance to save the planet. But if we are not united in peace, if we do not practice mindful consumption, we cannot save our planet.”

— Nhat Hanh

195. “Our own life has to be our message.”

— Nhat Hanh

196. “The wave does not need to die to become water. She is already water.”

— Nhat Hanh

197. “When you have a toothache, you think that not having a toothache will make you very happy. But when you don’t have a toothache, often you are still not happy. If you practice awareness, you suddenly become very rich, very very happy.”

— Nhat Hanh

198. “Happiness is not an individual matter. When you are able to bring relief, or bring back the smile to one person, not only that person profits, but you also profit.”

— Nhat Hanh

199. “Around us, life bursts with miracles, a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops.”

— Nhat Hanh

200. “If you do not give right attention to the one you love, it is a kind of killing. When you are in the car together, if you are lost in your thoughts, assuming you already know everything about her, she will slowly die.”

— Nhat Hanh