The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.

Like a fine flower, beautiful to look at but without scent, fine words are fruitless in a man who does not act in accordance with them.

Mindfulness means keeping one's consciousness alive to the present reality.

If I had any position, I would thereby have a flaw. But since I have no position, I alone am without flaw.

In my youth I studied, in my prime I practiced, now all my doubts are cleared.

The noting mind and the object noted appear to occur as a pair. Through concentration they are seen to arise and vanish together.

Awareness is the basis, or what you might call the "support," of the mind. It is steady and unchanging, like the pole to which the flag of ordinary consciousness is attached.

The practice of mindfulness is the practice of being alive in the present moment.

The more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life.

To be attached to a thing means that mind and the thing meet and grow into each other.

The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.

Should a person do good, let him do it again and again. Let him find pleasure therein, for blissful is the accumulation of good.

The practitioner and practice are like fire and wood. The more you practice, the more you burn.

The root of suffering is attachment.

The most important thing in life is to know death is coming and to prepare for it.

When we look directly at our thoughts, they dissolve like bubbles in water.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

The cultivation of loving-kindness has the power to transform enmity into amity, hostility into hospitality.

We can learn to be present with whatever is happening in our lives, and in this way, we can begin to transform our relationship to difficulty.

Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.

The purpose of our lives is to be happy.

Life is an art, and like perfect art it should be self-forgetting.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.

At the bottom of great doubt lies great awakening. If you doubt fully, you will awaken fully.

When we understand that peace is not dependent on external conditions, we can find it in the midst of any circumstance.

The development of insight is gradual, but the realization of truth is sudden.

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything.

Every moment is a fresh beginning. Every breath is a new chance.

The practice is like peeling an onion. Layer after layer of delusion is removed through continuous mindfulness.

True happiness is born of letting go of what is unnecessary.

The purpose of our lives is to be happy, and happiness is found in benefiting others.

The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?

The three characteristics - impermanence, suffering, and non-self - are not philosophical concepts but aspects of experience to be directly observed.