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.

Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos; trees, clouds, everything.

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

Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.

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.

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.

It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace.

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains.

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.

Although the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen.

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.

What a new face courage puts on everything!

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.

Whatever you have spend less.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

This is the ultimate end of man, to find the One which is in him; which is his truth, which is his soul; the key with which he opens the gate of the spiritual life, the heavenly kingdom.

If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.

He hates chess. He says it is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something clever when they are only wasting their time.

Switzerland is simply a large, lumpy, solid rock with a thin skin of grass stretched over it.