Top 30 Wayne Muller Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Even in the middle of a hurricane, the bottom of the sea is calm. As the storm rages and the winds howl, the deep waters sway in gentle rhythm, a light movement of fish and plant life. Below there is no storm.”

— Wayne Muller

2. “If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath – our pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create Sabbath for us.”

— Wayne Muller

3. “Like a path through the forest, Sabbath creates a marker for ourselves so, if we are lost, we can find our way back to our center.”

— Wayne Muller

4. “When we come close to those things that break us down, we touch those things that also break us open. And in that breaking open, we uncover our true nature.”

— Wayne Muller

5. “All life has emptiness at its core; it is the quiet hollow reed through which the wind of God blows and makes the music that is our life.”

— Wayne Muller

6. “Your life is not a problem to be solved but a gift to be opened.”

— Wayne Muller

7. “Our lives are made of these moments. Simple words and actions, taken together, weave a single day, and our days become our life. Every gesture is a seed, and the seed determines the harvest.”

— Wayne Muller

8. “What if the healing of the world utterly depends on the ten-thousand invisible kindnesses we offer simply and quietly throughout the pilgrimage of each human life?”

— Wayne Muller

9. “Gratitude invites a sense of sufficiency.”

— Wayne Muller

10. “The heart of most spiritual practices is simply this: Remember who you are. Remember what you love. Remember what is sacred. Remember what is true. Remember that you will die and that this day is a gift. Remember how you wish to live.”

— Wayne Muller

11. “In the soil of the quick fix is the seed of a new problem, because our quiet wisdom is unavailable.”

— Wayne Muller

12. “Mother Teresa who said, “We can do no great things, only small things, with great love.”

— Wayne Muller

13. “Even when our intentions are noble and our efforts sincere, even when we dedicate our lives to the service of others, the corrosive pressure of frantic over-activity can nonetheless cause suffering in ourselves and others. A “successful” life can become a violent enterprise.”

— Wayne Muller

14. “The last place we tend to look for healing is within ourselves.”

— Wayne Muller

15. “For thousands of years we have gathered in circle – around fires, around bodies, around altars – because we can’t do this alone.”

— Wayne Muller

16. “Because we do not rest, we lose our way.”

— Wayne Muller

17. “We become what we love. Whatever you are giving your time and attention to, day after day, is the kind of person you will eventually become.”

— Wayne Muller

18. “What we choose to love is very important for what we love leads our eyes, ears, and hearts on a pilgrimage that shapes the texture of our lives.”

— Wayne Muller

19. “Some of us have a hard time believing that we are actually able to face our own pain. We have convinced ourselves that our pain is too deep, too frightening, something to avoid at all costs. Yet if we finally allow ourselves to feel the depth of that sadness and gently let it break our hearts, we may come to feel a great freedom, a genuine sense of release and peace, because we have finally stopped running away from ourselves and from the pain that lives within us.”

— Wayne Muller

20. “Just because we are working hard does not mean we are making anything happen.”

— Wayne Muller

21. “What we love and what captures our curiosity draws us forward into some place of great destiny.”

— Wayne Muller

22. “There is more to life,” said Gandhi, “than increasing its speed.”

— Wayne Muller

23. “True kindness is rooted in a deep sense of abundance, out of which flows a sense that even as I give, it is being given back to me.”

— Wayne Muller

24. “The more spacious and larger our fundamental nature, the more bearable the pains in living.”

— Wayne Muller

25. “Sabbath is more than the absence of work; it is not just a day off, when we catch up on television or errands. It is the presence of something that arises when we consecrate a period of time to listen to what is most deeply beautiful, nourishing, or true. It is time consecrated with our attention, our mindfulness, honoring those quiet forces of grace or spirit that sustain and heal us.”

— Wayne Muller

26. “Adults who were hurt as children inevitably exhibit a peculiar strength, a profound inner wisdom, and a remarkable creativity and insight. Deep within them – just beneath the wound – lies a profound spiritual vitality, a quiet knowing, a way of perceiving what is beautiful, right, and true. Since their early experiences were so dark and painful, they have spent much of their lives in search of the gentleness, love, and peace they have only imagined in the privacy of their own hearts.”

— Wayne Muller

27. “Mark Nepo calls “experience greed” – namely, an insidious grasping not so much for material possessions but rather for a seemingly benign cacophony of socially active networks, service opportunities, ecological adventures, community activities, helpful organizations, sacred gatherings, and spiritual experiences.”

— Wayne Muller

28. “Meditation helps me feel the shape, the texture of my inner life. Here, in the quiet, I can begin to taste what Buddhists would call my true nature, what Jews call the still, small voice, what Christians call the holy spirit.”

— Wayne Muller

29. “To pray is no small thing. It is nothing less than a sacred pilgrimage into the heart of the whole world.”

— Wayne Muller

30. “Be not afraid. A kind life, a life of spirit, is fundamentally a life of courage-the courage simply to bring what you have, to bring who you are.”

— Wayne Muller

31. “When we do what we love, again and again, our life comes to hold the fragrance of that thing.”

— Wayne Muller

32. “With every breath, the possibility of a new aspect of self arises.”

— Wayne Muller

33. “Our culture confuses the pain of isolation with some impossible ideal of “self-sufficiency,” and then celebrates it.”

— Wayne Muller

34. “Can it then be that what we call the ‘self’ is fluid and elastic? It evolves, strikes a different balance with every new breath.”

— Wayne Muller