Top 500 Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Everyone needs a spiritual dimension in life. Without a spiritual dimension, it’s very challenging to be with the daily difficulties we all encounter.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

302. “I am inviting you to go deeper, to learn and to practice so that you become someone who has a great capacity for being solid, calm, and without fear, because our society needs people like you who have these qualities, and your children, our children, need people like you, in order to go on, in order to become solid, and calm, and without fear.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

303. “Knowledge is the first obstacle of the mind that a meditator should be able to remove. We should not be too sure of anything.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

304. “We absorb and reflect what is around us. If we live in a place where people are angry and violent, then eventually we’ll become like them.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

305. “If we can heal our wounded child, we will not only liberate ourselves, but we will also help liberate whoever has hurt or abused us. The abuser may also have been the victimg of abuse.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

306. “When a feeling or thought arises, your intention should not be to chase it away, even if by continuing to concentrate on the breath the feeling or thought passes naturally from the mind. The intention isn’t to chase it away, hate it, worry about it, or be frightened by it. So what exactly should you be doing concerning such thoughts and feelings? Simply acknowledge their presence.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

307. “We all exist as part of a wonderful stream of life.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

308. “Often we either don’t plan at all, or we get caught up in obsessive planning because we fear the future and its uncertainty.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

309. “Violence can never bring about peace and understanding. Only by looking deeply in order to understand the true roots of violence can we achieve peace.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

310. “Root out the violence in your life, and learn to live compassionately and mindfully. Seek peace. When you have peace within, real peace with others is possible.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

311. “When we observe or listen to other people, we often don’t see them clearly or really hear what they’re saying. We see and hear our projections and prejudices instead.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

312. “Standing in line at a grocery store or a restaurant, or waiting for the time to eat, we don’t need to waste our time. We don’t need to “wait” for one second. Instead, we can enjoy breathing in and out for our nourishment and healing. We can use that time to notice that we will soon be able to have food, and we can be happy and grateful during that time. Instead of waiting, we can generate joy.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

313. “If we continue to hold on to a dream for something in the future, we lose the present moment. And if we lose the present, we lose everything.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

314. “If you can see your mother as a fragile five-year-old girl, then you can forgive her very easily with compassion. The five-year-old girl who was your mother is always alive in her and in you.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

315. “What are you ruminating on? Old suffering?”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

316. “You have to protect yourself and your beloved ones by practicing selective watering.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

317. “When this body was just born, it was very light. As we grow, we tend to get weighed down by worries and lose our freshness and beauty. Mindful eating helps us regain this freshness, nourishing our spirits as well as our bodies. Eating with appreciation of our own bodies, we eat with more relaxation and joy.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

318. “Know that life can only be found in the present moment.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

319. “Even if we have time, we don’t come home to ourselves. We try to keep ourselves constantly entertained – watching television, socialising, or using alcohol or drugs – because we don’t want to experience that suffering all over again.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

320. “The best position for practicing this is lying down. You focus your attention on a part of your body, such as your heart. As you breathe in, you become aware of your heart, and as you breathe out, you smile towards it. You send it your love, your tenderness.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

321. “Consciously choosing what and who you surround yourself with is among the keys to finding more space for joy.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

322. “During the moment one is consulting, resolving, and dealing with whatever arises, a calm heart and self-control are necessary if one is to obtain good results. Anyone can see that. If we are not in control of ourselves but instead let our impatience or anger interfere, then our work is no longer of any value.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

323. “Suppose you want something very much. You think that if you don’t get that something, happiness won’t be possible. You get caught in that idea. But, in reality, there are people who have that thing who are miserable, and there people who don’t have that thing who are perfectly happy.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

324. “We’re all searching for a place where we feel safe and comfortable, a home where we can be truly ourselves. As we become more skilled in mindfulness and lay down the roots of fidelity, we can truly relax with our partner. All the restlessness and searching inside dissipates when we find our true home.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

325. “Someday, with no effort at all, you will understand. You only have to allow yourself to be there, to touch deeply each thing you encounter, to walk mindfully, and to help others with the whole of your being. This is the practice of non-practice.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

326. “In the past, we probably did suffer from one thing or another. It may even have felt like a kind of hell. If we remember that suffering, not letting ourselves get carried away by it, we can use it to remind ourselves, “How lucky I am right now. I’m not in that situation. I can be happy.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

327. “Being rich is an obstacle to loving. When you are rich, you want to continue to be rich, and so you end up devoting all your time, all your energy, in your daily life to stay rich.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

328. “Be in touch with what is wondrous, refreshing, and healing, both inside and around yourself.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

329. “But the path back home is not long. Home is inside us. Going home requires only sitting down and being with yourself, accepting the situation as it is. Yes, it might be a mess in there, but we accept it because we know we have left home for a long time. So now we’re home. With our in-breath and our out-breath, our mindful breathing, we begin to tidy up our homes.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

330. “We can walk in such a way that we arrive with each step – not walking just to get somewhere else.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

331. “In everyone there’s a continuous desire and expectation; deep inside, you still expect something better to happen. That is why you check your email many times a day!”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

332. “If you get angry every day, your seed of anger will grow bigger and bigger, and it will be much more difficult for compassion to grow. Without compassion, it will be difficult to use loving speech.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

333. “When we compare, we see ourselves as superior, inferior, or as trying to be equal. But with this kind of comparing comes discrimination, and with discrimination comes suffering.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

334. “When we pay attention to our breathing, our in-breath and out-breath become peaceful and relaxed. When we walk with attention and we just walk without thinking or being carried away by anything, we already begin to heal.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

335. “Our appointment with life is in the present moment.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

336. “Precepts in Buddhism and commandments in Judiasm and Christianity are important jewels that we need to study and practice. They provide guidelines that can help us transform our suffering.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

337. “Zen Master Linji said, “The miracle is not to walk on water or fire. The miracle is to walk on the earth.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

338. “May we find ways to live more simply in order to have more time and energy to change the system of injustice that exists in the world.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

339. “Whether we are in the city, the countryside, or the wilderness, we need to sustain ourselves by choosing our surroundings carefully and nourishing our awareness in each moment.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

340. “When we take a moment to sit and breathe before we eat, we can get in touch with the real hunger in our body. We can discover if we’re eating because we’re hungry or if we’re eating because it’s the time to eat and the food is there.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

341. “We should live every day like people who have just been rescued from the moon.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

342. “We produce ourselves, we product our own future. We have to offer our best thoughts, speech and actions. Mindfulness helps us to know whether we’re producing the right thing for future and helps us remember that what we produce is us, is our continuation.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

343. “The way we perceive the world around us depends entirely on our way of looking at it.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

344. “While practicing mindfulness, don’t be dominated by the distinction between good and evil, thus creating a battle within oneself.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

345. “Hell is in us, like a seed. We need to cultivate the positive within us so we can generate the energy of understanding and compassion and transform hell.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

346. “The wise do not consider the chains and shackles of jail to be the toughest restraints. The chains of attachment are the strongest of the ties that bind.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

347. “Don’t agonize over the past, because the past is gone. Don’t worry about the future, because the future is not yet here.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

348. “We may think that if we ignore our fears, they’ll go away. But if we bury worries and anxieties in our consciousness, they continue to affect us and bring us more sorrow.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

349. “Each morning when we wake up to life we see that we have a gift of twenty-four brand new hours. If.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

350. “To live, we must die every instant. We must perish again and again in the storms that make life possible.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh