Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

My friend, the sufi is the friend of the present moment. To say tomorrow is not our way.

You have to remember one life, one death–this one! To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death, whether we catch it on the inbreath or outbreath, requires only a moment, this moment. And along with it all the mindfulness we can muster, and each stage of our ongoing birth, and the confident joy of our inherent luminosity. (24)

I think it's really important to live in the moment.

I have an intention to live each moment fully.

I'm always living in the moment.

But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

I don’t think of dying, I think of being here now.

You can't live at all unless you can live fully now.

Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.

Everyone rushes his life on, and suffers from a yearning for the future and a boredom with the present. But that man who devotes every hour to his own needs, who plans every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears tomorrow.

The fullness of life is only accessible in the present moment.

Live in the present. The past is gone; the future is unknown - but the present is real, and your opportunities are now.

You have no choice but to live in the present, if you're really being open to events and people as they come along.

The quality of your moments produces the quality of your life. So, as thoughts come and go and the waves of mind rush on, Carpe punctum-Seize this moment. It deserves your full attention, for it will not pass your way again.

You must treat the days respectfully, you must be a day yourself, and not interrogate it like a college professor.

Your primary purpose is to be here fully, and to be total in whatever you do so that the preciousness of the present moment does not become reduced to a means to an end. And there you have your life purpose. That's the very foundation of your life.

But I don't think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness, but only reached now in middle age.

Quit worrying about how everything is going to turn out. Live one day at a time; better yet, make the most of this moment.

Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That's the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real--the here-and-now. Seize the day.

In this moment, you have everything you need, and life is just a series of moments.

The present gives you the opportunity to dive deep into the water of life, or to fly high into the sky of life. But on both the sides there are dangers - 'past' and ´future´ are the most dangerous words in human language.

Only one person in a thousand knows the trick of really living in the present. Most of us spend fifty-nine minutes an hour living in the past, with regret for lost joys or shame for things badly done (both utterly useless and weakening) or in a future which we either long for or dread. . . . There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute, here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle. Which is exactly what it is-a miracle and unrepeatable.

Although she had resisted this knowledge all her life, had lived determinedly in the future focused there by ambition, she understood at last that this was the real condition of humanity: The dance of life occurred not yesterday or tomorrow, but only here at the still point that was the present. This truth is simmple, sel-evident, but difficult to accept, for we sentimentalize the past and wallow in it, while we endure the moment and in every waking hour dream of the future.

Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment 'as to the Lord.' It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.

It sometimes seems that we live as if we wonder when life is going to begin. It isn't always clear just what we are waiting for, but some of us sometimes persist in waiting so long that life slips by - finding us still waiting for something that has been going on all the time. . . . This is the life in which the work of this life is to be done. Today is as much a part of eternity as any day a thousand years ago or as will be any day a thousand years hence. This is it, whether we are thrilled or disappointed, busy or bored! This is life, and it is passing.