Thich Nhat Hanh Famous Quotes
"Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life."
"Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy."
"The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers."
"When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change."
"The true miracle is not walking on water or walking in air, but simply walking on this earth."
"People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar."
"Every day we do things, we are things that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our life..., our way of looking at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment, we are alive."
"Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos - the trees, the clouds, everything."
Thich Nhat Hanh Quotations
Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.
Quentin Crisp
"One person can have a profound effect on another. And two people...well, two people can work miracles. They can change a whole town. They can change the world."
Andrew Schneider
The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress.
Hendrik Willem Van Loon
"There is incredible value in being of service to others. I think if most of the people in therapy offices were dragged out to put their finger in a dike, take up their place in a working line, they would be relieved of terrible burdens."
Elizabeth Berg
"If we are lucky, we can give in and rest without feeling guilty. We can stop doing and concentrate on being."
Kathleen Norris
Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.
Indian Proverb
"Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping, and watching for the morrow,-- He knows ye not, ye gloomy Powers."
Johann von Goethe
A good deed never goes unpunished.
Gore Vidal
The public is a ferocious beast -- one must either chain it up or flee from it.
Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
"Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the sense shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness."
Hellen Keller