Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

Once I was a prisoner lost inside myself with the world surrounding me, wandering through the misery, but now I am free. Free to love, free to laugh, free to soar, free to shine, free to give.

Happiness is the cessation of suffering.

I've had a few arguments with people, but I never carry a grudge. You know why? While you're carrying a grudge, they're out dancing.

I guess I don't think there's any reason to feel guilty about having joy in your life, regardless of how bad things are in the world.

Social change can be painful for all involved—oppressor and oppressed.

You can't hold a grudge against anybody; you gotta let it go.

Hate is awful.

There is too much hate in the world; too much hurt.

Understanding transforms, it does not sublimate. If you understand, anger disappears and the same energy becomes compassion. Not that you sublimate: anger simply disappears, and the energy that was involved, invested in anger, is released and becomes compassion. When you understand hate, hate disappears and the same energy becomes love. Love is not against hate -- it is absence of hate.

A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.

Nothing but religion is capable of changing pains into pleasures.

The hurt you embrace becomes joy.

No matter how many possessions we acquire, they will not provide us with any lasting happiness and freedom. On the contrary, it is often our pursuit of material possessions that causes our problems. If we want ultimate happiness and freedom from suffering, we must engage in the supreme practices of training the mind. There is no other way.

It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.

Try to understand why it is happening, from where it is coming, where the roots are, how it happens, how it functions, how it overpowers you, how in anger you become mad. Anger has happened before, it is happening now, but now add a new element to it, the element of understanding -- and then the quality will change. Then, by and by, you will see that the more you understand anger, the less it happens. And when you understand it perfectly, it disappears. Understanding is like heat. When the heat comes to a particular point -- one hundred degrees -- the water disappears.

True salvation is freedom from negativity.

Hate is the father of all evil.

The best happiness will be to escape the worst misery.

When you want to become free, your righteousness and anger are much less interesting than they used to be.

The highest happiness is when one reaches the stage of liberation, at which there is no more suffering.

Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world. But being, being is happiness. Being: Becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.

Life is going by. Don't waste a minute being negative, offended, or bitter. Choose to be happy.

Letting go gives us freedom and freedom is the only condition for happiness

That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me. I am a big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I'm a spring leaf trembling in anticipation.

Once I knew the depth where no hope was and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free.