This is a curated selection of Thich Nhat Hanh quotes (personally curated by me on my own lifelong learning journey). This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes aren’t a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Thich Nhat Hanh’s books (Amazon).
Page Contents:
- Pain & Suffering Quotes
- Compassion & Communication Quotes
- Breathing & Living Quotes
- Mindfulness & Presence Quotes
- Interconnectedness Quotes
25 Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes on Breathing, Presence, Mindfulness, & More
Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes on Pain & Suffering
“Many people live, and yet, they are not alive. They live like a dead man or dead woman. They carry their own dead body and circulate around. They are not alive. They are always caught in their regret, in their fear. They cannot touch life … It’s a pity. They spend 50 years, and 60 years, and 70 years living like that and have never been able to touch the wonders of life—the Kingdom of God, the Pure Land of Buddha.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“Our century should be a century of spirituality. Whether we can survive or not, depends on it.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“In our daily lives, very often our body is there, but our mind is elsewhere … How can you be alive when only your body is there, and your mind still wanders in the past or in the future? You are not really alive.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“We don’t know how to rest anymore. Mankind has lost the capacity of resting. And resting is the ground of healing.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“You are running around and searching for healing. But the healing is obtained when you don’t do anything. You just rest and allow nature to do its work … We need a strong will, a big desire, in order to be able to stop because the habit of running is very strong in us—in our body and in our mind.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes on Compassion & Communication
“To love our enemy is impossible. The moment we understand our enemy, we feel compassion towards him or her, and he or she is no longer our enemy.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“Once you have been able to reconcile with yourself, you can reconcile very easily with the other person and end the difficulties in your relationship.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“If you continue to look, to listen, to your pain, your suffering, you come to understand it. And, understanding will always bring compassion … And, when compassion is there, you don’t suffer anymore. No anger; only the intention to help.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“Understanding suffering will bring compassion. And compassion is going to heal you and make you suffer less. And then you can help the other person.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“You need only some time to look deeply to see the suffering in him or in her, to see that he has been the victim of his own suffering for a long time, and he does not need punishment. He needs help. If you have that kind of insight and compassion, you are surely capable to use loving speech.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes on Breathing & Living
“You don’t need to have faith in Buddha or in God. You need to have only faith in your in-breath.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“When you sit down and eat your breakfast, eat your breakfast in such a way that makes the healing possible … Chew your food as if you have nothing to worry about, a busynessless person … Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“The energy of mindfulness can be generated by mindful breathing, mindful walking, mindful eating, mindful washing … Everything you do in your daily life can be used for your healing. Walking up, walking down, sitting, lying down, breathing, washing your dishes—it can allow you to completely rest.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“Every step, every breath, every act, can be totally relaxed—can have the power of healing … You breathe as a free person, and you walk as a free person … Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“If you really focus your attention on your in-breath and your out-breath, you release everything else, and you become a free person … Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out … Breathing in and out is to get back to the present moment where you have an appointment with life.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes on Mindfulness & Presence
“Mindfulness means to be aware of what is going on … To be awake is to be aware of what is going on in your body, in your feelings, in your perceptions, in your mental formations, and in the world around you.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“Forgetfulness is the opposite of mindfulness. To live in forgetfulness means to get lost in the past or in the future—to be possessed by anger, hatred, fear. Therefore, you are not ready to enter into the Kingdom of God.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“Life can be found only in the present moment … The present moment is the substance with which the future is made, and therefore, the best way to take care of the future is to take care the present moment … If you take good care of the present moment, there’s no reason why you have to worry about the future because you know that the future will be made by the present.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“Mindfulness is the best part of us … Mindfulness, after having performed the work of calming, will be used to perform the work of looking deeply … Looking deeply and listening deeply is the act of meditation … Take the time to live more deeply.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“There is only one moment when you can be truly alive. That is the present moment. You have an appointment with life in the present moment, and if you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life—which is very serious.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes on Interconnectedness
“About thirty years ago I was looking for an English word to describe our deep interconnection with everything else. I liked the word ‘togetherness,’ but I finally came up with the word ‘interbeing.’ The verb ‘to be’ can be misleading, because we cannot be by ourselves, alone. ‘To be’ is always to ‘inter-be.’” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“The body and the mind inter-are. The body contains the mind and the mind contains the body. They inter-contain each other. That is why helping the body to stop, you can help the mind to stop also. And helping the mind to stop, you help the body to stop.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“Whatever I am doing, the energy of mindfulness enables me to do it as ‘us,’ through interbeing, not as ‘me’ … Interbeing means you cannot be by yourself alone. You have to co-be, inter-be, with everything else.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“We do not exist independently. We inter-are. Everything relies on everything else in the cosmos in order to manifest—whether a star, a cloud, a flower, a tree, or you and me.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“To be means to inter-be. A flower has to inter-be with everything else. She has to inter-be with the sunshine, with the cloud, with everything else. She doesn’t have a separate existence. Being means co-being. Existing means co-existing.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“You carry Mother Earth, you carry the sunshine, you carry the rain, everything. This is not a ‘me’, this is a ‘we’. We inter-are. If we remove the element of parents, ancestors, food, education, air, water, there is no ‘us’ left. So, ‘we’ means the whole cosmos.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
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