Top 500 Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Understanding is the essence of love. If you cannot understand, you cannot love.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

102. “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

103. “Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with the truth.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

104. “The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves “inside the skin” of the other.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

105. “Western civilization places so much emphasis on the idea of hope that we sacrifice the present moment. Hope is for the future. It cannot help us discover joy, peace, or enlightenment in the present moment.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

106. “Whatever the tasks, do them slowly and with ease, in mindfulness.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

107. “For true love to be there, you need to feel complete in yourself, not needing something from outside.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

108. “Right View cannot be described. We can only point in the correct direction. Right View cannot even be transmitted by a teacher. A teacher can help us identify the seed of Right View that is already in our garden, and help us have the confidence to practice, to entrust that seed to the soil of our daily life.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

109. “Your body is not just yours. It is a gift and a responsibility.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

110. “No one can be by himself or herself alone. We have to inter-be, connected with everyone and everything else.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

111. “Love is a living, breathing thing. There is no need to force it to grow in a particular direction. If we start by being easy and gentle with ourselves, we will find it is just there inside of us, solid and healing.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

112. “In this food I see clearly the presence of the entire universe supporting my existence.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

113. “The ability to apologize sincerely and express regret for the unskillful things we say or do is an art. A true apology can relieve a great deal of suffering in the other person.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

114. “Stillness is the foundation of understanding and insight.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

115. “There are two ways to wash the dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second is to wash the dishes to wash the dishes.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

116. “According to the Buddha’s teachings, the most basic condition for happiness is freedom. Here we do not mean political freedom, but freedom from the mental formations of anger, despair, jealousy, and delusion. These mental formations are described by the Buddha as poisons. As long as these poisons are still in our heart, happiness cannot be possible.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

117. “Equanimity means to let go, not to abandon.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

118. “Each of us is like the waves and also like the water. Sometimes we’re excited, noisy, and agitated like the waves. Sometimes we’re tranquil like still water. When water is calm, it reflects the blue sky, the clouds, and the trees. Sometimes, whether we’re at home, work, or school, we become tired, agitated, or unhappy and we need to transform into calm water. We already have calmness in us; we just need to know how to make it manifest.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

119. “FREEDOM IS THE basis of all happiness. Without freedom, there is no happiness.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

120. “Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible. If a grain of corn is not impermanent, it can never be transformed into a stalk of corn. If the stalk were not impermanent, it could never provide us with the ear of corn we eat.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

121. “If we want peace, we have to be peace. Peace is a practice and not a hope.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

122. “True love is made of four elements: loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. In Sanskrit, these are, maitri, karuna, mudita, and upeksha.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

123. “Reconciliation can also be with your own self. If you don’t reconcile with yourself, happiness with another person is impossible.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

124. “Love, respect, and friendship all need food to survive.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

125. “Fear is based on ignorance. Lack of understanding is also a primary cause of anger.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

126. “The past no longer exists, and the future is not here yet.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

127. “I don’t exercise to get fit or be healthier; I do it to enjoy being alive.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

128. “The person you love has all kinds of seeds in her: joy, suffering, and anger. If you water her anger, then in just five minutes you can bring the anger out in her. If you know how to water the seeds of her compassion, joy, and understanding, then these seeds will blossom. If you recognize the good seeds in her, you are watering her self-confidence and she will become the source of her own happiness as well as yours.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

129. “What is happening in the present moment is life.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

130. “Be a friend to yourself. If you are a true friend to yourself, you can be a true friend to a loved one. A romantic crush is short-lived, but friendship and loving kindness can last very long and continue to grow.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

131. “This is, because that is. This is not, because that is not. This is like this, because that is like that.” This is the Buddhist teaching of Genesis.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

132. “Often, our pride stands in the way of our asking for help. In true love there is no place for pride. To love each other means to trust each other. If you don’t tell the person you love of your suffering, it means you don’t love this person enough to trust her. You have to realize that this person is the best person to help you. We need to be able to get help from the person we.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

133. “Waking up this morning I smile. I have twenty-four hours to live. I vow to live them deeply and learn to look at the beings around me with the eyes of compassion.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

134. “Breathing in, I see all my ancestors in me: my mineral ancestors, plant ancestors, mammal ancestors, and human ancestors. My ancestors are always present, alive in every cell of my body, and I play a part in their immortality.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

135. “May our heart’s garden of awakening bloom with hundreds of flowers.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

136. “When we read a magazine, we consume. When we watch a television program, we consume. Whatever we consume affects our body and mind. If we consume toxic magazine articles, movies, or video games, they will feed our craving, our anger, and our fear.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

137. “Aimlessness does not mean doing nothing. It means not putting something in front of you to chase after. When we remove the objects of our craving and desires, we discover that happiness and freedom are available to us right here in the present moment.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

138. “The only place where we can touch Jesus and the Kingdom of God is within us.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

139. “When we cannot communicate, we suffer, and we spill our suffering on to other people. We can find ways to open the doors of communication again.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

140. “The fruit of mindfulness practice is the realization that peace and joy are available within us and around us, right here and right now.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

141. “Invite your fear into consciousness, and smile through it; every time you smile through your fear, it will lose some of its strength.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

142. “Our suffering is us, and we need to treat it with kindness and nonviolence.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

143. “Without compassion, you are utterly alone.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

144. “I am a continuation like the rain is the continuation of the cloud.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

145. “The future is being made out of the present, so the best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment. This is logical and clear. Spending a lot of time speculating and worrying about the future is totally useless. We can only take care of our future by taking care of the present moment, because the future is made out of only one substance: the present. Only if you are anchored in the present can you prepare well for the future. Although.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

146. “There needs to be a revolution in education. We must encourage schools to train our students in the art of living in peace and harmony. It isn’t easy to learn to read, write, or solve math problems, but children manage to do it. Learning how to breathe, smile, and transform anger can also be difficult, but I have seen many young people succeed. If we teach children properly, by the time they are around twelve, they will know how to live harmoniously with others.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

147. “If you can recognize and accept your pain without running away from it, you will discover that although pain is there, joy can also be there at the same time. Some.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

148. “Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

149. “The roots of a lasting relationship are mindfulness, deep listening and loving speech, and a strong community to support you.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

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

— Thich Nhat Hanh