Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

Without pain, how could we know joy?' This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.

In order to have great happiness you have to have great pain and unhappiness - otherwise how would you know when you're happy?

I think that hurting gives us a way to measure being happy. How can you know one without knowing the other.

Next to the highest peak of happiness, there’s the deepest gap of pain.

We must feel the pain before the pleasure, only then can we tell them apart.

Alas! sorrow from happiness is oft evolved.

Acting is about communicating what it is like to be human: the pain, the laughs, the misery, the joy. I suppose I am searching to have it all.

In this world, full often, our joys are only the tender shadows which our sorrows cast.

I do believe that if you haven't learnt about sadness, you cannot appreciate happiness.

I have been blessed with a good, fun, and wonderful life, but I've also seen a whole lot of pain.

I believe in joy, but I believe in the flip-side, agony.

I found more joy in sorrow than you could find in joy.

If we never felt sorrow, we'd never recognize bliss.

There is no light without shadow, just as there is no happiness without pain.

He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.

The flip side of happiness is suffering.

To appreciate heaven well, it's good for a person to have some fifteen minutes of hell.

We may thank God that we can feel pain and know sadness, for these are the human sentiments that constitute our glory as well as our grief.

How delicious is pleasure after torment!

In our lives, we have good things and bad things, happiness and pain.

In the scriptures, we are told you can't really understand happiness unless you understand sadness. You don't know pleasure if you don't know pain. It's part of life. So can you learn something from somebody who has gone from success to success to success? I don't think so.

Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.

Sometimes I find that in my happy moments I could not believe that I had ever been miserable.

I have a great deal of joy in my life, and I'm very fortunate. That combination makes you aware of just how wonderful life can be on the one hand and how dreadful it can be for people on the other. You can't be happy in isolation.