Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

Difficulty creates the opportunity for self-reflection and compassion.

Suffering is a good teacher. It keeps you in its grip until you've learned your lesson.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

I never said I wanted a 'happy' life but an interesting one. From separation and loss, I have learned a lot. I have become strong and resilient, as is the case of almost every human being exposed to life and to the world. We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward.

Possibly because I've lived so much of my life in difficult circumstances, I think I have a more profound understanding of life.

Misery is, by her own nature, a passing phase of sorrow, one that does not linger uninvited. Her sojourns seem to be part of life's required curriculum, perhaps because Misery endows us with compassion and empathy.

I'm very very happy for my hardships and misfortunes: they build character and make you a better person. Even if I think it's something you have to carry with you, it's definitely something that makes you more empathic towards other people, makes you understand people and relationships so much better.

Grace changes us and change is painful".

We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.

Affliction comes to us all ...not to impoverish, but to enrich us, as the plough enriches the field; to multiply our joy, as the seed, by planting, is multiplied a thousand-fold.

Everybody has difficult years, but a lot of times the difficult years end up being the greatest years of your whole entire life, if you survive them.

It is through suffering that learning comes.

A tragedy can turn out to be our greatest good if we approach it in ways which we can grow.

We all suffer. If a man's wise, he learns from it.

There is the mud, and there is the lotus that grows out of the mud. We need the mud in order to make the lotus.

If ever we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed. I wonder what kind of finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you, and you have been like a marble and escaped?

In all experience, there is something to be learned. In deepest sorrow, wisdom is found. In the well of despair, hope rises.

Only through suffering do we learn

We all have to go through the tumbler a few times before we can emerge as a crystal.

Maybe I should have cut him some slack. With his broken wing and lifetime of eating roadkill, he probably had a lot to be ungrateful about. Too much hard luck can create a permanent meanness of spirit in any creature.

In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.

Its unfortunate and I really wish I wouldn't have to say this, but I really like human beings who have suffered. They're kinder.

Hard times make you bitter or make you more compassionate.

I think I got a lot of life skills; I got a lot of wisdom; I've seen a lot of bad things happen to a lot of good people.

It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.