Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

It's like growing lotus flowers. You cannot grow lotus flowers on marble. You have to grow them on the mud. Without mud you cannot have lotus flowers. Without suffering, you have no way to learn how to be understanding and compassionate.

Throw dirt on me, and grow a wild flower

I think there can always be beauty in struggle.

We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

Without dark clouds in our lives, we would never know the joy of sunshine. We can become callous and unteachable if we do not learn from pain.

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.

Beauty that arose out of pain.

Our torments also may in length of time Become our Elements.

I have been to hell and back, and let me tell you, it was wonderful.

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

A lot of what is most beautiful about the world arises from struggle.

The lotus comes from the murkiest water but grows into the purest thing.

What is hard to remember when you're in the middle of it is that when you get through to the other side, you always walk away with a gift. If you can stand in there and not walk away from it, you get transformed by it.

My truth is that what doesn't kill you makes you weaker rather than stronger, although it makes you wiser.

Sometimes when really terrible things happen, something beautiful emerges out of it.

I believe it is only when one comes out of adversity, that one starts to see real beauty.

From out of pain, beauty.

The thing is, the only real sign of life is growth. And growth requires pain. So to choose life is to accept pain.

Pain is the great teacher of mankind. Beneath its breath souls develop.

Grace changes us and change is painful".

As the most generous vine, if it is not pruned, runs out into many superfluous stems, and grows at last weak and fruitless; so dote the best man, if he be not cut short of his desires and pruned with afflictions. If it be painful to bleed, it is worse to wither. Let me be pruned, that I may grow, rather than be cut up to burn.

We don't seek the painful experiences that hew our identities, but we seek our identities in the wake of painful experiences. We cannot bear a pointless torment, but we can endure great pain if we believe that it's purposeful. Ease makes less of an impression on us than struggle. We could have been ourselves without our delights, but not without the misfortunes that drive our search for meaning. 'Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities,' St. Paul wrote in Second Corinthians, 'for when I am weak, then I am strong.'

If we approach adversities wisely, our hardest times can be times of greatest growth, which in turn can lead toward times of greatest happiness.

The beast that bears you fastest to perfection is suffering.

Every day is a masterpiece, even if it crushes you.