Siddhartha Gautama is known as the founder of Buddism. Centuries after this death, his words are still profound as Buddha quotes are continually shared.
Gautama Buddha was an ascetic religious leader and teacher who lived in ancient India. He is revered by Buddhists as an enlightened being who rediscovered an ancient path to freedom from ignorance, craving, and the cycle of rebirth and suffering. He taught for about 45 years and amassed a large monastic and lay following. His teaching is based on his understanding of the emergence of suffering or dissatisfaction and its resolution—the state known as Nirvana.
Below are 139 of the best Buddha quotes about life, love, happiness and inner peace, compassion, change, anger, meditation, and evil.
Table of Contents
Buddha quotes about life
1. What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create.
- Health is the greatest gift, contentment, the greatest wealth, faithfulness, the best relationship.
- However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act upon them?
- I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.
- Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
- Your mind is a powerful thing. When you start to filter it with positive thoughts your life will start to change.
- Neither fire, nor wind, birth, nor death, can erase our good deeds.
- To understand everything is to forgive everything.
- When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.
- Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
- Purity or impurity depends on oneself, no one can purify another.
- All suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their own happiness or satisfaction.
- Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
- If we fail to look after others when they need help, who will look after us?
- Remembering a wrong is like carrying a burden on the mind.
- There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way and not starting.
- It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you.
18. Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have.
- Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
- Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.
- Happiness does not depend on what you have or who you are. It solely relies on what you think.
- Suffering is not holding you, you are holding suffering.
- The trouble is, you think you have time.
- One who acts on truth is happy in this world and beyond.
- Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.
- Be where you are; otherwise, you will miss your life.
- The root of all suffering is attachment.
- Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.
- When it hurts, observe. Life is trying to teach you something.
- I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.
- There is no fear for one whose mind is not filled with desires.
- Long is the night to him who is awake; long is a mile to him who is tired; long is life to the foolish who do not know the true law.
- Don’t rush anything. When the time is right, it’ll happen.
- Ardently do today what must be done. Who knows? Tomorrow, death comes.
- All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
36. Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?
- Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.
- You only lose what you cling to.
- If you light a lamp for someone else, it will also brighten your path.
- Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
- Those who have failed to work toward the truth have missed the purpose of living.
- If anything is worth doing, do it with all your heart.
- If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way.
- Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.
- Life is so very difficult. How can we be anything but kind?
- All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.
- The past is already gone, the future is not yet here. There’s only one moment for you to live.
- Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.
- In the end, these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?
- Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.
- If you are facing in the right direction, all you need to do is keep walking.
52. If you want to fly, give up everything that weighs you down.
- Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
- Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.
- You don’t have a Soul. You are a soul. You have a body.
- Change is never painful. Only resistance to change is painful.
- One moment can change a day, one day can change a life, and one life can change the world.
- Irrigators channel waters; fletchers straighten arrows; carpenters bend wood; the wise master themselves.
- No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
- Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines, but it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes.
- When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.
- Be where you are; otherwise you will miss your life.
- One who, while himself seeking happiness, oppresses with violence other beings who also desire happiness, will not attain happiness hereafter.
- If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts, happiness follows them like a never-departing shadow.
- It is ridiculous to think that somebody else can make you happy or unhappy.
- A disciplined mind brings happiness.
- To one ever eager to revere and serve the elders, these four blessings accrue: long life and beauty, happiness and power.
- There is no fire like lust and no crime like hatred. There is no ill like the aggregates of existence and no peace higher than the peace of Nirvana.
- Whatever is not yours: let go of it. Your letting go of it will be for your long-term happiness and benefit.
- It is in the nature of things that joy arises in a person free from remorse.
71. Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.
Buddha quotes about love
- Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals.
- You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserves your love and affection.
- Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.
- You are far from the end of your journey. The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart. See how you love.
- If you truly loved yourself, you could never hurt another.
- Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.
- Just as a mother would protect her only child with her life, even so let one cultivate a boundless love towards all beings.
- Buddha quotes about love
- In the end, only three things matters: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.
- True love is born from understanding.
Buddha quotes about happiness and inner peace
- If by renouncing a lesser happiness one may realize a greater happiness, let the wise one renounce the lesser, having regard for the greater.
- It also means making an effort to alleviate the suffering experienced by others.
- To support mother and father, to cherish wife and children, and to be engaged in peaceful occupation — this is the greatest blessing.
- It’s better to travel well than to arrive.
- Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.
- Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.
- At the end of the day, I’m at peace because my intentions are good and my heart is pure.
- Happy indeed we live, we who possess nothing.
90. Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have.
- A man is not called wise because he talks and talks again; but if he is peaceful, loving, and fearless then he is in truth called wise.
- Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.
- Entangled by the bonds of hate, one who seeks happiness by inflicting pain on others is never delivered from hatred.
- Friendship is the only cure for hatred, the only guarantee of peace.
- Should a person do good, let him do it again and again. Let him find pleasure therein, for blissful is the accumulation of good.
- Let him associate with friends who are noble, energetic, and pure in life, let him be cordial and refined in conduct. Thus, full of joy, he will make an end of suffering.
- Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.
Buddha quotes about compassion
According to Buddhist teachings, developing compassion is one of a few ways to achieve enlightenment. Compassion is to want all beings to experience happiness and freedom from suffering.
- In separateness lies the world’s greatest misery; in compassion lies the world’s true strength.
- Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.
- If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.
- Whatever living beings there may be feeble or strong, long, stout, or of medium size, short, small, large, those seen or those unseen, those dwelling far or near, those who are born as well as those yet to be born may all beings have happy minds.
- Imagine that every person in the world is enlightened but you. They are all your teachers, each doing just the right things to help you learn perfect patience, perfect wisdom, perfect compassion.
- For the good of the many, for the happiness of the many, out of compassion for the world.
- As rain falls equally on the just and the unjust, do not burden your heart with judgement but rain your kindness equally on all.
99. Fashion your life as a garland of beautiful deeds.
- Give, even if you only have a little.
- Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.
- People with opinions just go around bothering each other.
- If you wish to be gentle with others, be gentle first with yourself.
- Our sorrows and wounds are healed only when we touch them with compassion.
- Radiate boundless love towards the entire world.
Buddha quotes about change
- Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again.
- To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one’s own in the midst of abundance.
- If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.
- Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.
- The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.
- To conquer oneself is a greater task than conquering others.
Buddha quotes about anger
In Buddhism, anger is seen as a destructive force.
107. Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
- Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
- You should respect each other and refrain from disputes; you should not, like water and oil, repel each other, but should, like milk and water, mingle together.
- Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.
- Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.
- Conquer anger with non-anger. Conquer badness with goodness. Conquer meanness with generosity.
- Silence the angry man with love. Silence the ill-natured man with kindness. Silence the miser with generosity. Silence the liar with truth.
- The tongue like a sharp knife kills without drawing blood.
- Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.
- An outside enemy exists only if there is anger inside.
- Better than a thousand useless words is one useful word, hearing which one attains peace.
- Friendship is the only cure for hatred, the only guarantee of peace.
- In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.
Buddha quotes about meditation
- Though one should live a hundred years without wisdom and control, yet better, indeed, is a single day’s life of one who is wise and meditative.
- Quiet the mind and the soul will speak.
- Stop, stop. Do not speak. The ultimate truth is not even to think.
- Delight in meditation and solitude. Compose yourself, be happy. You are a seeker.
- If you meditate earnestly, pure in mind and kind in deeds, leading a disciplined life in harmony with the dharma, you will grow in glory. If you meditate earnestly, through spiritual disciplines you can make an island for yourself that no flood can overwhelm.
- Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine
- 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.
- Meditate… do not delay, lest you later regret it.
- What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create.
- Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what hold you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.
- If you are quiet enough, you will hear the flow of the universe. You will feel its rhythm. Go with this flow. Happiness lies ahead. Meditation is key.
- If a man’s thoughts are muddy, if he is reckless and full of deceit, how can he wear the yellow robe? Whoever is master of his own nature, bright, clear and true, he may indeed wear the yellow robe.
- One should strive to understand what underlies sufferings and diseases – and aim for health and well-being while gaining in the path.
- For soon the body is discarded, then what does it feel? A useless log of wood, it lies on the ground, then what does it know? Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded. But once mastered, No one can help you as much, not even your father or your mother.
Buddha quotes about evil
- What is evil? Killing is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil, envy is evil, hatred is evil, to cling to false doctrine is evil; all these things are evil. And what is the root of evil? Desire is the root of evil, illusion is the root of evil.
- All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts. If a man speak or act with an evil thought, suffering follows him as the wheel follows the hoof of the beast that draws the wagon…. If a man speak or act with a good thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.
- It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe that lures him to evil ways.
- There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.
- What is evil? Killing is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil, envy is evil, hatred is evil, to cling to false doctrine is evil; all these things are evil. And what is the root of evil? Desire is the root of evil, illusion is the root of evil.
- Avoid evil deeds as a man who loves life avoids poison.
