If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.

—Thích Nhất Hạnh

life family connection

More quotations from Thích Nhất Hạnh

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

—Thích Nhất Hạnh

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

—Thích Nhất Hạnh

Do not take sides; if you take sides, you are trying to eliminate half of reality, which is impossible. For many years the United States has been trying to describe the Soviet Union as the evil side.… If we look at America very deeply, we see the Soviet Union. And if we look deeply at the Soviet Union, we see America. If we look deeply at the rose, we see the garbage; if we look deeply at the garbage, we see the rose. In this international situation, each side is pretending to be the rose and calling the other side garbage.

—Thích Nhất Hạnh

If you have a gun, you can go out and shoot one, two, three, five people. But if you have an ideology and stick to it, thinking it is the absolute truth, you can kill millions.

—Thích Nhất Hạnh

When I was four years old, my mother used to bring me a cookie every time she came home from the market. I always went to the front yard and took my time eating it, sometimes half an hour or forty-five minutes for one cookie. I would take a small bite and look up at the sky. Then I would touch the dog with my feet and take another small bite.… I was entirely in the present moment, with my cookie, the dog, the bamboo thickets, the cat, and everything.… It is possible to eat our meals as slowly and joyfully as I ate the cookie of my childhood.

—Thích Nhất Hạnh

More quotations tagged with “connection”

Friendship leads to human connection, which feeds your soul. More than kale or spinning or fifteen-minute naps under your desk, conscious communication with your clutch friends is the best form of self-care.

—Karen Kilgariff in Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered

friendship soul communication connection

It's interesting, isn't it? That you can find yourself feeling so awkward in unfamiliar surroundings that you become more self-aware and more self-conscious? Maybe that lack of connection to an unfamiliar place can actually give you freedom to open up and see yourself.

—Lauren Graham in Maybe

freedom connection

Yes, now. Now, please now, only now, not anything else only this now, and where are you and where am I and where is the other one, and not why, not ever why, only this now; and on and always please then always now, always now, for now always one now; one only one, there is no other one but one now, one, going now, rising now, sailing now, leaving now, wheeling now, soaring now, away now, all the way now, all of all the way now; one and one is one, is one, is one, is one, is still one, is still one, is one descendingly, is one softly, is one longingly, is one kindly, is one happily, is one in goodness, is one to cherish, is one now…

—Ernest Hemingway in For Whom the Bell Tolls

For the Dargara people, death results in simply a different form of belonging to the community. It is a lesson… that change is the norm, that the world is defined by eternal cycles of decline and regeneration.… Death is not a separation but a different form of communion, a higher form of connectedness… providing an opportunity for even greater service.

—Malidoma Somé

death connection community belonging regeneration reincarnation communion

She's your one. The one who reaches you. The one who makes you different.

—Abbi Glines in Hold On Tight

empathy change connection

History

4 May 2013 Added