Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

We have to get back to the beauty of just being alive in this present moment.

I know that the purpose of life is to understand and be in the present moment with the people you love. It's just that simple.

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.

I love being. There's so much wisdom in it. You wake up in the morning and you think, Hey, isn't it great just being?

Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present. Fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.

Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience.

Look up from what you're doing and look around for a minute. See what a beautiful world you're in.

I want to feel my life while I'm in it.

A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.

To know that every moment - regardless of how it comes wrapped - is a gift greater than you can give yourself, is to be well on your way to a life without fear.

That state of mind - of being beside yourself - is wonderful. As you get older, you're just very aware of a sense of an ending. You're grateful for every day.

When my body gets to the point where I can no longer function or feel gratitude, then I'll leave it and become grateful again. But until then, I will appreciate what I have and not whine about what I don't have. I will feel blessed by life and the opportunity to help others see that they are blessed, too.

I do think it's important to live in the present because in that way you won't be living in a state of regret.

I think that when you don't look at the good things around you, that you lose sight of all those good things. And you're not going to enjoy your life.

I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time.

Breathing in, I am aware of my heart. Breathing out, I smile to my heart and know that my heart still functions normally. I feel grateful for my heart.

In all of my looking at happiness, one thing I noticed right away is that the opposite of happiness isn't unhappiness or even depression, it's anxiety. It is something that can constantly block our happiness, or our chance to reach that sort of meditative state in our work or our home lives.

There are moments when everything goes well, but don't be frightened.

Happiness is rarely absent; it is we that know not of its presence.

Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.

True happiness is... to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

The real meditation practice is how we live our lives from moment to moment to moment.

The art of life is to live in the present moment, and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of God Himself.

Pick the day. Enjoy it - to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come... The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present - and I don't want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.