Thich Nhat Hanh

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. They prefer suffering that is familiar to the unknown.

Real love begins when nothing is expected in return.

Once we recognize that all things are impermanent, we have no problem enjoying them.

If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life. That is very serious!

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?

Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.

Children demand that their heroes should be freckleless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.

I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page.

Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for we all think we possess a good share of it.

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter.

Begin, be bold and venture to be wise.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.