Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

Household life is crowded and dusty; life gone forth is wide open... Suppose I shave off my hair and beard, put on the ochre robe, and go forth from the home life into homelessness.

He was somebody who made me think, I suppose, about the contemplative life. I've always been a city fellow, but I've often had vague thoughts about 'checking out' and perhaps going into a monastery and just seeing what it was like.

Hey, I always say: if you want a quiet life, become a monk.

When I became a novice monk, I lived in a temple where the atmosphere was quite like in a family. The abbot is like a father and other monks are like your big brothers, your small, younger brothers. It is a kind of family.

I like the monastic life... in the prayer and the praising... this has charged me with new energy, spiritual energy. This is very important for my ministry outside the monastery.

Thinking about monastic ideals is not the same as living up to them, but at any rate such thinking has an important place in a monk's life, because you cannot begin to do anything unless you have some idea what you are trying to do.

What will you do now?' I think I will become a monk and devote my entire life to prayer and good works.' No,' said Rek. 'I mean, what will you do today?' Ah! Today I'll get drunk and go whoring,' said Bowman.

[The monks'] minds were inaccessible to reason or mercy . . .

So, at the age of nine, I became a monk, and from then on I was there practicing that kind of nonviolence.

Contentment does not come from achievement. It comes from a relationship with the Lord.

I've had moments in my life when I've thought if I wasn't acting, if I wasn't doing what I do and I had a career in the private sector and I didn't have a family, that I do have some tendencies where I could really kind of have a monastic existence and be okay with it.

I should have been a Trappist monk.

I had the experience of a monk copying documents, applying myself assiduously to my work. And I thought whatever happened, happened - this is just what I do in my life.

We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.

I have devoted my energies to the study of the scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church; study, teaching, and writing have always been my delight.

You will find peace and happiness if you will live the gospel.

I didn’t want to be a nun.

In the end, you're trying to find God. That's the result of not being satisfied. And it doesn't matter how much money, or property, or whatever you've got, unless you're happy in your heart, then that's it. And unfortunately, you can never gain perfect happiness unless you've got that state of consciousness that enables that.

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

The voice that called us years ago still calls us today. Every monastic day is a new monastic beginning.

I'm going to do what feeds my soul.

I was filming in Roscrea in Co Tipperary. I had great fun watching monks in the monastery there making bread. They even offered me a job as their main baker. One of them said I would make a good monk, but I told him there was a slight problem because I was married.

I did take comfort in the vespers and compline. I might have become a monk if I hadn't come out.

The happiest people I know are those who have an obsession to the obedience of God.

A child of God should be a visible beatitude for joy and happiness, and a living doxology for gratitude and adoration.