So often we want happiness, but the very way we pursue it is so clumsy and unskillful that it brings only more sorrow. Usually we assume we must grasp in order to have that something that will ensure our happiness. [...] Learning to live is learning to let go.

Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth

That goodness is what survives death, a fundamental goodness that is in each and every one of us. The whole of our life is a teaching of how to uncover that strong goodness, and a training toward realizing it.

It is compassion, then, that is the best protection; it is also, as the great masters of the past have always known, the source of all healing.

Each time the losses and deceptions of life teach us about impermanence, they bring us closer to the truth. When you fall from a great height, there is only one possible place to land: on the ground-the ground of truth. And if you have the understanding that comes from spiritual practice, then falling is in no way a disaster, but the discovery of an inner refuge.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes with the voice of the Buddha.

Whatever we have done with our lives makes us what we are when we die. And everything, absolutely everything, counts.