Every morning, when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift!

Compassion is a verb.

If you establish serenity and happiness inside yourself, you provide the world with a solid base of peace. If you do not give yourself peace, how can you share it with others? If you do not begin your peace work with yourself, where will you go to begin it?

When you have a stomach ache you don't tell your stomach to go away.

Simple practices like conscious breathing and smiling are very important. They can change our civilization.

I would not look upon anger as something foreign to me that I have to fight... I have to deal with my anger with care, with love, with tenderness, with nonviolence.

If you come to Plum Village in the summertime, you see many lotus flowers. Without the mud the lotus flowers cannot grow. You cannot separate lotus flowers from the mud. It is the same with understanding and love. These are two kinds of flowers that grow on the ground of suffering