Top 500 Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Peace is based on respect for life, the spirit of reverence for life.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

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

— Thich Nhat Hanh

303. “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

304. “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

305. “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

306. “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

307. “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. We must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs, aspirations, and suffering of the person we love. This is the ground of real love. You cannot resist loving another person when you really understand him or her.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

308. “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

309. “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

310. “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

311. “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

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

— Thich Nhat Hanh

313. “What you read and write can help you heal, so be thoughtful about what you consume.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

314. “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

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

— Thich Nhat Hanh

316. “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

317. “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

318. “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

319. “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

320. “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

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

— Thich Nhat Hanh

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

— Thich Nhat Hanh

323. “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

324. “Your concept or perception of reality is not reality. When you are caught in your perceptions and ideas, you lose reality.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

325. “If someone were to ask, “What’s the purpose of walking meditation? What’s the point? Why do you practice it?” There are several answers we can give. But for me the best answer is, “Because I like it.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

326. “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

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

— Thich Nhat Hanh

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

— Thich Nhat Hanh

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

— Thich Nhat Hanh

330. “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

331. “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

332. “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

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

— Thich Nhat Hanh

334. “There is no difference between healing ourselves and healing the Earth.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

335. “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

336. “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

337. “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

338. “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

339. “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

340. “Flowers decompose, but knowing this does not prevent us from loving flowers. In fact, we are able to love them more because we know how to treasure them while they are still alive. If we learn to look at a flower in a way that impermanence is revealed to us, when it dies, we will not suffer. Impermanence is more than an idea. It is a practice to help us touch reality.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

341. “We will receive the fruits of any act we have done, whether wholesome or unwholesome.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

342. “When a farmer uses a kind of fertilizer that does not have any effect, he has to change the fertilizer. The same is true for us. If, after several months, the practice we are doing has not brought about any transformation and healing, we have to reconsider the situation.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

343. “Ending our consumption of violent images and toxic communication gives us the chance to transform the violence and suffering in us.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

344. “When you work with your computer for three or four hours, you are totally lost. It’s like eating french fries. You shouldn’t eat french fries all day, and you shouldn’t be on the computer all day.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

345. “If one person keeps calm and smiles at a provocation, the whole world will have a better chance for peace.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

346. “We must begin to live fully and truly, every moment of our daily lives.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

347. “To love is, first of all, to accept ourselves as we are.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

348. “We fall back into the past, we jump ahead into the future, and in this we lose our entire lives.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

349. “The most basic precept of all is to be aware of what we do, what we are, each minute. Every other precept will follow from that.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

350. “Do not think the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice nonattachment from views in order to be open to receive others’ viewpoints.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh