Top 500 Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism in China, how much merit he had earned by building temples all over the country. Bodhidharma said, “None whatsoever.” But if you wash one dish in mindfulness, if you build one small temple while dwelling deeply in the present moment – not wanting to be anywhere else, not caring about fame or recognition – the merit from that act will be boundless, and you will feel very happy.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

152. “Smiling is a kind of mouth yoga. When we smile, it releases the tension in our face. Others notice it, even strangers, and are likely to smile back. By smiling, we initiate a wonderful chain reaction, touching the joy in anyone we encounter. A smile is an ambassador of goodwill.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

153. “A smile can relax hundreds of muscles in your face, and relax your nervous system. A smile makes you master of yourself.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

154. “TO ME, THE definition of hell is simple: it is a place where there is no understanding and no compassion.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

155. “Peace and calm are contagious.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

156. “If your love is true love, it will benefit not only humans, but also animals, plants, and minerals. When you love one person, it’s an opportunity for you to love everyone, all beings. Then you are going in a good direction, and that is true love. But if you love someone and you get caught up in suffering and attachment, then you get cut off from others. That’s not true love.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

157. “Eating is not only nourishing for the body, but also for the mind.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

158. “You may learn that your partner has many wrong perceptions about you and about the situation, but try not to interrupt. Let her speak. Let her have a chance to speak out everything in her so she can feel listened to and understood. As your partner speaks, continue to breathe mindfully. Later on you may find a way to undo her misunderstanding, little by little in a very skillful, loving way, and mutual understanding will grow.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

159. “It is only when we stop that we can encounter life.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

160. “Whatever the tasks, do them slowly and with ease, in mindfulness. Don’t do any task in order to get it over with. Resolve to do each job in a relaxed way, with all your attention. Enjoy and be one with your work. Without this, the day of mindfulness will be of no value at all. The feeling that any task is a nuisance will soon disappear if it is done in mindfulness. Take the example of the Zen Masters. No matter what task or motion they undertake, they do it slowly and evenly, without reluctance.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

161. “The third element of love is mudita, joy. True love always brings joy to ourselves and to the one we love. If our love does not bring joy to both of us, it is not true love.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

162. “If you know how to make good use of the mud, you can grow beautiful lotuses. If you know how to make good use of suffering, you can produce happiness. We do need some suffering to make happiness possible. And most of us have enough suffering inside and around us to be able to do that. We don’t have to create more.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

163. “If we want to reconcile with our family or with friends who have hurt us, we have to take care of ourselves first. If we’re not capable of listening to ourselves, how can we listen to another person? If we don’t know how to recognise our own suffering, it won’t be possible to bring peace and harmony into our relationships.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

164. “When you are washing the dishes, washing the dishes must be the most important thing in your life. Just as when you are drinking tea, drinking tea must be the most important thing in your life. Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the whole world revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this actual moment is life.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

165. “The fear, the anger and the despair is born on the ground of wrong perception.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

166. “Many of us live like dead people because we live without awareness. We carry our dead bodies with us and circulate throughout the world. We are pulled into the past or we are pulled forward into the future or we are caught by our projects or our despair and anger. We are not truly alive; we are not inhabited by awareness of the miracle of being alive.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

167. “If learning is not followed by reflecting and practicing, it is not true learning.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

168. “Understanding and love aren’t two separate things, they’re just one.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

169. “Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

170. “When we’re able to love our enemy, that person is no longer our enemy. The idea of “enemy” vanishes and is replaced by the person who is suffering and needs our compassion.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

171. “Breathing in, I know I have an unpleasant feeling. Breathing out, I am here for this unpleasant feeling. Breathing in, I calm the feeling in me. Breathing out, I calm the feeling in me.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

172. “When we respect our blood ancestors and our spiritual ancestors, we feel rooted.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

173. “Everyday we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child – our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

174. “To be alive is the greatest of all miracles, and you can rejoice in being alive. When you breathe in this way, your breath is a celebration of life.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

175. “The past no longer exists, and the future is not here yet.” The only moment in which you can be truly alive is the present moment. The present moment is the destination, the point to arrive at. Every time you breathe in and take a step, you arrive: “Breathing in, I arrive. Breathing out, I arrive.” The.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

176. “Much of our suffering comes from wrong perceptions. To remove that hurt, we have to remove our wrong perception.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

177. “Impermanence means that everything changes and that nothing remains the same in any consecutive moments. And although things change every moment, they still cannot be accurately described as the same or as different from what they were a moment ago.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

178. “When restless sexual desire arises, we pay attention to it with enough understanding and enough love that it dissipates and does not grow.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

179. “Desirelessness is the basic condition that makes possible the feelings of joy, peace, and ease that come with living a simple life. Simplicity means to have few desires, to be content with a simple life and just a few possessions. Desirelessness is the basis of true happiness, because in true happiness there must be the elements of peace, joy, and ease.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

180. “There is no need to travel a great distance to touch the Kingdom of God, because it is not located in space or time.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

181. “You’ve got to practice meditation when you walk, stand, lie down, sit, and work, while washing your hands, washing the dishes, sweeping the floor, drinking tea, talking to friends, or whatever you are doing: “While washing the dishes, you might be thinking about the tea afterwards, and so try to get them out of the way as quickly as possible in order to sit and drink tea. But that means that you are incapable of living during the time you are washing the dishes.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

182. “Friends, being lost in thoughts is one of the things that prevents us from making true contact with life. If you are ruled by worry, frustration, anxiety, anger, or jealousy, you will lose the chance to make real contact with all the wonders of life.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

183. “We cannot be by ourselves alone. We can only inter-be with everything else in the cosmos.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

184. “Looking deeply” means observing something or someone with so much concentration that the distinction between observer and observed disappears.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

185. “Ask yourself, “Who can I make smile this morning?” This is the art of creating happiness.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

186. “We are all mother’s of the Buddha because we are all pregnant with the potential for awakening.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

187. “If we take good care of ourselves, we help everyone. We stop being a source of suffering to the world, and we become a reservoir of joy and freshness. Here and there are people who know how to take good care of themselves, who live joyfully and happily. They are our strongest support. Whatever they do, they do for everyone.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

188. “We do not have to die to get to the gates of Heaven.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

189. “Instead, we must learn how to make friends with our hardships and challenges. They are there to help us; they are natural opportunities for deeper understanding and transformation, bringing us more joy and peace as we learn to work with them.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

190. “A person is not some private entity traveling unaffected through time and space as if sealed off from the rest of the world by some thick shell.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

191. “There is a film, an image stored in your consciousness. Every time your mind goes back to the past and you look at that image or watch that film, you suffer again.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

192. “Find space in your day when you can practice mindful breathing and letting go of tensions.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

193. “The truth is that everything contains everything else. We cannot just be, we can only inter-be.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

194. “When feeling lonely or anxious, most of us have the habit of looking for distractions, which often leads to some form of unwholesome consumption – whether eating a snack in the absence of hunger, mindlessly surfing the Internet, going on a drive, or reading. Conscious breathing is a good way to nourish body and mind with mindfulness.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

195. “When we know how to be at peace, we find that art is a wonderful way to share our peacefulness.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

196. “There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way. There is no way to enlightenment; enlightenment is the way.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

197. “When you understand, you cannot help but love. You cannot get angry.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

198. “If you do not know how to take care of yourself, and the violence in you, then you will not be able to take care of others. You must have love and patience before you can truly listen to your partner or child. If you are irritated you cannot listen. You have to know how to breath mindfully, embrace your irritation and transform it. Offer ONLY understand and compassion to your partner or child – This is the true practice of love.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

199. “If we are aware of our lifestyle, our way of consuming, of looking at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment we are alive.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

200. “The Buddha teaches that change requires insight, and insight cannot begin until we stop and focus our attention on what is happening right in front of us. This stopping, or shamatha, allows us to rest the body and the mind. When we have calmed ourselves, we can then go on to look deeply into our current situation. We need to step off our frantic life treadmills, to stop unconsciously doing the same things over and over again that have allowed our weight to creep up.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh