Fidelity Quotes

“TRUE LOVE MAKES US HAPPY. If love doesn’t make us happy, it’s not love; it’s something else. Love is a wonderful thing. It gives us the ability to offer joy and happiness, relieve suffering, and transcend all kinds of separation and barriers.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“The person you love has all kinds of seeds in her: joy, suffering, and anger. If you water her anger, then in just five minutes you can bring the anger out in her. If you know how to water the seeds of her compassion, joy, and understanding, then these seeds will blossom. If you recognize the good seeds in her, you are watering her self-confidence and she will become the source of her own happiness as well as yours.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“You should have a chance to observe him when he sleeps. Look deeply, and see the tenderness that is revealed, the suffering, the hope, the despair that can be expressed during sleep. Sit there for fifteen minutes or half an hour, and just look. Understanding and compassion will arise in you, and you will know how to be there for your partner.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“We are aware that blaming and arguing can never help us and only create a wider gap between us; that only understanding, trust, and love can help us change and grow”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“Shouting at someone is not the way to help. If you’ve already shouted, then realize that this is one of your unskillful behaviors. Go back to your in-breath and out-breath and say, I have to repair this. Then go to the other person and apologize, and tell yourself that next time you’ll try your best to remember beforehand and act differently.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to utter words that can cause division or discord.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“A successful relationship depends on us recognising our own painful feelings and emotions inside—not fighting them, but accepting, embracing, and transforming them to get relief.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“Understanding another person isn’t possible until we have practiced looking deeply at ourselves. Then, when we look at the other person, we’ll begin to understand their suffering, because we’ve already seen and transformed our own. Once we can understand our loved one’s suffering, we can help him or her. We will no longer reproach or blame the other person, because we’ll have understanding in our hearts. Our way of looking at the other person will contain compassion. And the other person will be able to tell. Even if we haven’t done or said anything, our way of looking already begins the process of healing.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“If you can’t accept your body and your mind, you can’t be a home for yourself. Many young people don’t accept who they are, and yet they want to be a home for someone else. But how can they be if they’re not yet a home for themselves?”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“You have to learn how to be comfortable with yourself and focus on making your own home within. Once you have a spiritual path, you have a home. Once you can deal with your emotions and handle the difficulties of your daily life, then you have something to offer to another person. The other person has to do the same thing. Both people have to heal on their own so they feel at ease in themselves; then they can become a home for each other. Otherwise, all that we share in physical intimacy is our loneliness and suffering.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“We may have suffered a lot because of our attachment to those things, but we don’t have the courage to release them; it doesn’t feel safe to do so. But it may be that we continue to suffer because of our attachment to those things. It may be a person, a material object, or a position in society, anything. We think that without that person or thing we will not be safe, and that is why we’re caught by it.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“Suppose you want something very much. You think that if you don’t get that something, happiness won’t be possible. You get caught in that idea. But, in reality, there are people who have that thing who are miserable, and there people who don’t have that thing who are perfectly happy.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“Sometimes we don’t want to move, speak, or act like that. But something deep inside us pushes us to speak and act in that way. Afterward, we feel so ashamed.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“The wise do not consider the chains and shackles of jail to be the toughest restraints. The chains of attachment are the strongest of the ties that bind.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“When restless sexual desire arises, we pay attention to it with enough understanding and enough love that it dissipates and does not grow.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“If you are really joyful and your joy is healthy, then that benefits other people. If you’re not joyful, not fresh, or not smiling, then that doesn’t benefit anyone. If you’re inhabited by joy and freshness, even if you do nothing, we profit from you.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“Many parents love their children. Yet they make them suffer a lot in the name of love. They’re often not capable of understanding their children’s suffering, difficulties, hopes, and aspirations. We have to ask ourselves, “Am I really loving the other person by understanding them or am I just projecting my own needs?”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“Understanding is a gift. The other person may feel understood for the first time. Understanding is the other name of love. If you don’t understand, you can’t love. If you don’t understand your son, you can’t love him. If you don’t understand your mother, you can’t love her. To offer understanding means to offer love. Without understanding, the more we love, the more we make ourselves and others suffer.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“When we practice walking with awareness, our solid peaceful steps cultivate the energy of mindfulness and bring us back to the present moment. When we sit and follow our breathing, aware of our in-breath and out-breath, we are cultivating the energy of mindfulness. When we have a meal in mindfulness, we invest all our being in the present moment and are aware of our food and of those who are eating with us. We can cultivate the energy of mindfulness, whatever we are doing—when we are working, or cleaning up, and even when we are being intimate with our loved one. Just a few days practicing like this can increase our energy of mindfulness, and that energy will help us, protect us, and give us courage to go back to ourselves, to see and embrace what is there in our territory.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“Often our perceptions are incorrect. We get in touch with an object and think that it embodies love, happiness, a self, or purity. We tend to think that love is something sentimental that will fill the emptiness inside us. We blame our suffering on another person or group, or on bad luck, but outside conditions are not the reason it appears. Our suffering was already there.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“People often ask if it is difficult to be a celibate monk or nun, but to practice mindfulness as a monastic is in many ways easier than to practice as a layperson. To refrain from sexual activity altogether is much easier than to have a healthy sexual relationship.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“To love, in the true sense of the word, is to feel no discrimination. We should have the element of equanimity, so that we can love without boundaries. Equanimity is the absence of the three complexes—better, worse, and equal. We no longer discriminate. We are able to embrace everything and we no longer suffer. When there is love without discrimination, there is also an absence of suffering.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“If we want to be happy and joyful, then we must be determined to let go of attachment. Free from attachment, we are no longer caught in the circle of samsara—not burdened by anxiety nor restlessly searching for what is unwholesome. The absence of attachment leads to true peace and joy.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“When we look deeply and honestly at our own suffering, energies, and views, we find a peace that comes from being comfortable in our own bodies. But our true home is not only inside us. Once we have become comfortable in ourselves, then we can begin listening deeply to the suffering of our loved ones, and begin understanding their experiences and views. Then we can become a true home for each other.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“We’re all searching for a place where we feel safe and comfortable, a home where we can be truly ourselves. As we become more skilled in mindfulness and lay down the roots of fidelity, we can truly relax with our partner. All the restlessness and searching inside dissipates when we find our true home.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“If you have a difficult relationship, and you want to make peace with the other person, you have to go home to yourself. Go home to your garden and cultivate the flowers of peace, compassion, understanding, and joy. Only after that can you come to your partner and be patient and compassionate.
When we commit to another person, we make a promise to grow together, sharing the fruit and progress of practice. It is our responsibility to take care of each other. Every time the other person does something in the direction of change and growth, we should show our appreciation.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“With our faith in our community of two or more, we can go anywhere.When the three roots of faith, practice, and community support have fed us deeply, then we will be solid both alone and in our relationships. We will not just survive; we will flourish. Often in our daily lives, we are just focused on survival. But fidelity is not a question of survival. It is one of vitality.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“Each time we practice sitting meditation, walking meditation, awareness of breathing, loving speech, deep listening, or any other mindfulness practice, our roots are growing stronger and deeper and we are gaining more solidity and strength.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“We can look around and see that a person who lives with happiness and compassion has the capacity to make others happy.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

“True love gives us a lot of space. Because you are connected spiritually and emotionally as well as physically, you do not need to always be in the same place or doing the same thing. You do not worry if your beloved is over here today and you are over there.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts