When you’re being truly present, you are practicing mindfulness which helps you focus and really appreciate the special things happening around you and the people that surround you. When you are mindful, you care about your relationships and other people’s struggles, pains, and success. These mindfulness quotes we compiled will surely resonate with you and can be applied to your everyday life.
Mindfulness Quotes
1. When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you. – Lao Tzu
2. 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, live the actual moment. Only this moment is life. – Thich Nhat Hanh
3. As soon as we wish to be happier, we are no longer happy. – Walter Landor
4. Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn’t more complicated than that. It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it. – Sylvia Boorstein
5. In today’s rush, we all think too much, seek too much, want too much, and forget about the joy of just being. – Eckhart Tolle
6. If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. – Dalai Lama
7. Suffering usually relates to wanting things to be different than they are. – Allan Lokos
8. If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher. – Pema Chodron
9. If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. – William Blake
10. Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor. – Thich Nhat Hanh
11. If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath. – Amit Ray
12. In the end, just three things matter: How well we have lived. How well we have loved. How well we have learned to let go. – Jack Kornfield
13. Do every act of your life as though it were the last act of your life. – Marcus Aurelius
14. Everything is created twice, first in the mind and then in reality. – Robin S. Sharma
15. Don’t believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that – thoughts. – Allan Lokos
16. Respond, don’t react. Listen, don’t talk. Think, don’t assume. – Raji Lukkoor
17. In this moment, there is plenty of time. In this moment, you are precisely as you should be. In this moment, there is infinite possibility. – Victoria Moran
18. Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t). – James Baraz
19. Mindfulness isn’t difficult, we just need to remember to do it. – Sharon Salzberg
20. It’s only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up – that we will begin to live each day to the fullest as if it was the only one we had. – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
21. Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life. – Seneca
22. Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. – Rumi
23. I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
24. Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most. – Buddha
25. Always hold fast to the present. Every situation, indeed every moment, is of infinite value, for it is the representative of a whole eternity. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
26. The way to live in the present is to remember that ‘This too shall pass.’ When you experience joy, remembering that ‘This too shall pass’ helps you savor the here and now. When you experience pain and sorrow, remembering that ‘This too shall pass’ reminds you that grief, like joy, is only temporary. – Joey Green
27. If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul. – Rabbi Harold Kushner
28. There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing bliss at this present moment, and it’s because you’re thinking or focusing on what you don’t have. But, right now you have everything you need to be in bliss. – Anthony de Mello
29. Our own worst enemy cannot harm us as much as our unwise thoughts. No one can help us as much as our own compassionate thoughts. – Buddha
30. Observe the space between your thoughts, then observe the observer. – Hamilton Boudreaux
31. The practice of mindfulness begins in the small, remote cave of your unconscious mind and blossoms with the sunlight of your conscious life, reaching far beyond the people and places you can see. – Earon Davis
32. Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the small uncaring ways. – Stephen Vincent Benet
33. As long as we have practiced neither concentration nor mindfulness, the ego takes itself for granted and remains its usual normal size, as big as the people around one will allow. – Ayya Khema
34. Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don’t struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality. – Pema Chodron
35. The basic root of happiness lies in our minds; outer circumstances are nothing more than adverse or favorable. – Matthieu Ricard
36. The mind in its natural state can be compared to the sky, covered by layers of cloud which hide its true nature. – Kalu Rinpoche
37. Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. – Dalai Lama
38. If one were truly aware of the value of human life, to waste it blithely on distractions and the pursuit of vulgar ambitions would be the height of confusion. – Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
39. Knowledge does not mean mastering a great quantity of different information, but understanding the nature of mind. This knowledge can penetrate each one of our thoughts and illuminate each one of our perceptions. – Matthieu Ricard
40. The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers. – Thich Nhat Hanh
41. We are awakened to the profound realization that the true path to liberation is to let go of everything. – Jack Kornfield
42. To diminish the suffering of pain, we need to make a crucial distinction between the pain of pain, and the pain we create by our thoughts about the pain. Fear, anger, guilt, loneliness and helplessness are all mental and emotional responses that can intensify pain. – Howard Cutler
43. Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. – Pema Chodron
44. Why, if we are as pragmatic as we claim, don’t we begin to ask ourselves seriously: Where does our real future lie? – Sogyal Rinpoche
45. Envy and jealousy stem from the fundamental inability to rejoice at someone else’s happiness or success. – Matthieu Ricard
46. By breaking down our sense of self-importance, all we lose is a parasite that has long infected our minds. What we gain in return is freedom, openness of mind, spontaneity, simplicity, altruism: all qualities inherent in happiness. – Matthieu Ricard
47. Our lives are lived in intense and anxious struggle, in a swirl of speed and aggression, in competing, grasping, possessing and achieving, forever burdening ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations. – Sogyal Rinpoche
48. 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. – Thich Nhat Hanh,
49. Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow. – Catherynne M. Valente
50. What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
51. Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more. – Mother Teresa
52. One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt. – Alan Wilson Watts
53. The mind is just like a muscle – the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets and the more it can expand. – Idowu Koyenikan
54. I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally. – Marilynne Robinson
55. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular. – C.G. Jung
56. The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently. – Pema Chodron
57. All beings want to be happy, yet so very few know how. It is out of ignorance that any of us cause suffering, for ourselves or for others. – Sharon Salzberg
58. The energy of mindfulness has the element of friendship and loving kindness in it. – Thich Nhat Hanh
59. By learning to allow different types of discomfort to simply stay in the room with you, without your scrambling for a button to push (real or metaphorical), you make discomfort matter less. The pool of things you’re afraid of shrinks. It becomes a lot less important to control circumstances, because you know you can handle moments of uncertainty or awkwardness or disappointment without an escape plan. – David Cain
60. Look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them. – Jon Kabat-Zinn
61. We often have very little empathy for our own thoughts and feelings and frequently try to suppress them by dismissing them as weaknesses. – Mark Williams
62. Essentially, meditation allows us to live in ways that are less automatic. This necessarily means less time spent worrying, ruminating, and trying to control things we can’t control. It means we become less vulnerable to the throes of the fear-driven, older parts of our brains, and freer to use our newer and more sophisticated mental abilities: patience, compassion, acceptance and reason. – David Cain
63. Acknowledging the pain and the suffering that take place inside you, and allowing the feelings, will take time, but this new way of handling these feelings will change the way you relate to you and to the outside world. – Kelly Martin
64. The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers. – Thich Nhat Hanh
65. Somehow I always seem to forget the most powerful tool I have in my parenting arsenal: myself. My presence. – Carla Naumburg
66. Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone. – Louis L’Amour
67. We withdraw from our experience of the present moment. We pull away from the raw feelings of fear and shame by incessantly telling ourselves stories about what is happening in our life. – Tara Brach
68. The standard way of reducing stress in our culture is to put as much energy as possible into trying to arrive at a moment that matches our preferences. This ensures that we feel some level of stress until we get there (assuming we ever will) and worse, it makes the present moment into an unacceptable place to be. – David Cain
69. If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath. – Amit Ray
70. Pain is not wrong. Reacting to pain as wrong initiates the trance of unworthiness. The moment we believe something is wrong, our world shrinks and we lose ourselves in the effort to combat the pain. – Tara Brach
71. We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjure up to avoid the unavoidable. – Jon Kabat-Zinn
72. We do so much, we run so quickly, the situation is difficult, and many people say, “Don’t just sit there, do something.” But doing more things may make the situation worse. So you should say, “Don’t just do something, sit there.” Sit there, stop, be yourself first, and begin from there. – Thich Nhat Hanh
73. If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret. – Jim Carrey
74. Stepping out of the busyness, stopping our endless pursuit of getting somewhere else, is perhaps the most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit. – Tara Brach
75. You have to remember one life, one death–this one! To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death, whether we catch it on the inbreath outbreath, requires only a moment, this moment. And along with it all the mindfulness we can muster, and each stage of our ongoing birth, and the confident joy of our inherent luminosity. – Stephen Levine
76. One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt. – Alan W. Watts,
77. Whatever you eye falls on – for it will fall on what you love – will lead you to the questions of your life, the questions that are incumbent upon you to answer, because that is how the mind works in concert with the eye. The things of this world draw us where we need to go. – Mary Rose O’Reilley,
78. Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretense. – Marcus Aurelius,
79. If one were truly aware of the value of human life, to waste it blithely on distractions and the pursuit of vulgar ambitions would be the height of confusion. – DilgoKhyentse Rinpoche
80. As soon as we wish to be happier, we are no longer happy. – Walter Landor
81. To diminish the suffering of pain, we need to make a crucial distinction between the pain of pain, and the pain we create by our thoughts about the pain. Fear, anger, guilt, loneliness and helplessness are all mental and emotional responses that can intensify pain. – Howard Cutler
82. It stands to reason that anyone who learns to live well will die well. The skills are the same: being present in the moment, and humble, and brave, and keeping a sense of humor. – Victoria Moran,
83. This isn’t just “another day, another dollar.” It’s more like “another day, another miracle. – Victoria Moran
84. Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience. – Jon Kabat-Zinn
85. The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. – Jon Kabat-Zinn
86. The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. – Henry Miller
87. Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand – and melting like a snowflake. – Francis Bacon Sr.
88. Nothing is worth more than this day. You cannot relive yesterday. Tomorrow is still beyond your reach. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
89. Surrender to what is. Let go of what was. Have faith in what will be. – Sonia Recotti
90. Mindfulness means purposely paying attention, in the present moment, without making any kind of judgment.
91. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle. – Tara Brach
92. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. – Pema Chödrön
93. Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. – Pema Chödrön
94. Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. – Pema Chödrön
95. Treat everyone you meet as if they were you.
96. If the problem can be solved why worry? If the problem cannot be solved worrying will do you no good. – Buddha
97. Open the window of your mind. Allow the fresh air, new lights and new truths to enter. – Amit Ray
98. Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well. – Jack Kornfield
99. Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. – Buddha
100. When I’m hungry, I eat what I love. When I’m bored, I do something I love. When I’m lonely, I connect with someone I love. When I feel sad, I remember that I am loved. – Michelle May
101. Our life is shaped by our mind, for we become what we think. – Buddha
102. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. – Thich Nhãt Hanh
103. Instead of thinking of food as the enemy, allow yourself to enjoy the process of planning and preparing meals or going out to lunch with a friend. Stay in the present moment and understand that the purpose of food is nourishment. – Susan Albers
104. Mindful eating is a way to become reacquainted with the guidance of our internal nutritionist. – Jan Chozen Bays
105. Mindful eating is about awareness. When you eat mindfully, you slow down, pay attention to the food you are eating, and savor every bite. – Susan Albers
106. The feeling that any task is a nuisance will soon disappear if it is done in mindfulness. – Thich Nhãt Hanh
107. If you clean the floor with love, you have given the world an invisible painting. – Osho
108. Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside. – Ramana Maharshi
109. To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. – William Blake
110. Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to. cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes. – Ramana Maharshi
111. You have a treasure within you that is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer. – Eckhart Tolle
112. 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; live the actual moment. Only this moment is life. – Thich Nhat Hanh
113. There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. – Albert Einstein
114. Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. – Victor Frankl
115. Perhaps ultimately, spiritual simply means experiencing wholeness and interconnectedness directly, a seeing that individuality and the totality are interwoven, that nothing is separate or extraneous. If you see in this way, then everything becomes spiritual in its deepest sense. Doing science is spiritual. So is washing the dishes. – Jon Kabat-Zinn
116. “Maybe,” he said, rubbing her forehead. “But don’t worry about it. You need to be a little bit crazy. Crazy is the price you pay for having an imagination. It’s your superpower. Tapping into the dream. It’s a good thing not a bad thing.” – Ruth Ozeki
117. When even one virtue becomes our nature, the mind becomes clean and tranquil. Then there is no need to practice meditation; we will automatically be meditating always. – Swami Satchidananda
118. There are a thousand reasons to live this life, everyone of them sufficient. – Marilynne Robinson
119. True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one’s self; but the point is not only to get out – you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand. – Henry James
120. Whatever your eye falls on – for it will fall on what you love – will lead you to the questions of your life, the questions that are incumbent upon you to answer, because that is how the mind works in concert with the eye. The things of this world draw us where we need to go. – Mary Rose O’Reilley
