Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

Only work which is the product of inner compulsion can have spiritual meaning.

I brought all the instincts of a writer with me into the monastery.

Without sounding too pretentious, I feel my job is almost like becoming a monk or a nun - it's a calling.

I left the convent and that was because I wasn't a very good nun. I could see that I wasn't going to make it. It's very difficult to be a nun, or to live a religious life. It's very difficult to live a life of total celibacy or a life without any possessions or material responsibilities at all, or in total obedience to somebody else, and remain a mature whole human being, and I knew that I wasn't going to be one of those.

I am never better than when I am on the full stretch for God.

Why don't we follow our yearning?

And indeed, no man has found his religion until he has found that for which he must sell his goods and his life.

If you've ever felt inspired by a purpose or calling, you know the feeling of spirit working through you.

Mastery is not a question of genetics of luck, but of following your natural inclinations and the deep desires that stirs you from within.

Let all our employment be to know God: the more one knows Him, the more one desires to know Him.

I would not be happy if I had not become a monk.

God calls you to make definitive choices, and He has a plan for each of you: to discover that plan and to respond to your vocation is to move toward personal fulfillment.

I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. So at this wonderful, young age of 65, I don't know yet what the Lord has for me to do. I try to live up to the energy and to the calling, but I wouldn't dare say I have even scratched the surface yet.

So the desire you have, that itch that you have to be whatever it is you want to be ... that itch, that desire for good is God’s proof to you sent already to indicate that it’s yours. You already have it. Claim it.

If you desire the spirit of God you must keep the commandments of God.

Let all our employment be to know GOD: the more one knows Him, the more one desires to know Him. And as knowledge is commonly the measure of love, the deeper and more extensive our knowledge shall be, the greater will be our love: and if our love of GOD were great, we should love Him equally in pains and pleasures.

This was really what I was supposed to be doing, and it was a great blessing to have discovered this, and to be doing what was God's will for your life.

We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit.

Each of us has a Soul. But no one has stopped to tell us what the Soul is in the world to do. Or if they have told us, they've given us incomplete information - for example, that our job is to get back to God. That is not our job. We couldn't get back to God if we wanted to, because we never left God.

When we realize and embrace the Lord's will for us, we will love to do it. We won't want to do anything else. It's a passion.

Respond to every call that excites your spirit.

Of all the animal creations of God, main is the only animal who has been created in order that he may know his Maker. Man's aim is life is not therefore to add from day to day to his material prospects and to his material possessions, but his predominant calling is, from day to day to come nearer to his own Maker.

We strive always to have a beginner's mind.

Those who have not found the heaven below, will fail of it above.