How to Love Quotes

“To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“Understanding someone’s suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand, you can’t love.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“A true partner or friend is one who encourages you to look deep inside yourself for the beauty and love you’ve been seeking.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“Every person is a world to explore.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“LEARNING LOVE If our parents didn’t love and understand each other, how are we to know what love looks like? There aren’t courses or classes in love. If the grown-ups know how to take care of each other, then the children who grow up in this environment will naturally know how to love, understand, and bring happiness to others. The most precious inheritance that parents can give their children is their own happiness. Our parents may be able to leave us money, houses, and land, but they may not be happy people. If we have happy parents, we have received the richest inheritance of all.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“Other people’s actions are the result of their own pain and not the result of any intention to hurt you.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“THE GREATEST GIFT One of the greatest gifts we can offer people is to embody nonattachment and nonfear. This is a true teaching, more precious than money or material resources. Many of us are very afraid, and this fear distorts our lives and makes us unhappy. We cling to objects and to people like a drowning person clings to a floating log. Practicing to realize nondiscrimination, to see the interconnectedness and impermanence of all things, and to share this wisdom with others, we are giving the gift of nonfear. Everything is impermanent. This moment passes. That person walks away. Happiness is still possible.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“LOVING KINDNESS The first element of true love is loving kindness. The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness. You can be the sunshine for another person. You can’t offer happiness until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself. Learn how to practice mindfulness in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy for your own nourishment. Then you have something to offer the other person.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“Every one of us is trying to find our true home. Some of us are still searching. Our true home is inside, but it’s also in our loved ones around us. When you’re in a loving relationship, you and the other person can be a true home for each other.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love

“The roots of a lasting relationship are mindfulness, deep listening and loving speech, and a strong community to support you.”
― Hanh Nhat Thich, How to Love

“When you love someone, you have to have trust and confidence. Love without trust is not yet love. Of course, first you have to have trust, respect, and confidence in yourself. Trust that you have a good and compassionate nature. You are part of the universe; you are made of stars. When you look at your loved one, you see that he is also made of stars and carries eternity inside. Looking in this way, we naturally feel reverence. True love cannot be without trust and respect for oneself and for the other person.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“If you walk with true awareness of every step, without having a goal to get anywhere, happiness will arise naturally. You don’t need to look for happiness.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love

“The most precious inheritance that parents can give their children is their own happiness.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love

“THE ART OF OFFERING HAPPINESS In a friendship, we try to to offer our friend happiness. Sometimes you think that you’re doing something for someone else’s happiness, when actually your action is making them suffer. The willingness to make someone happy isn’t enough. You have your own idea of happiness. But to make someone else happy, you have to understand that person’s needs, suffering, and desires and not assume you know what will make them happy. Ask, “What would make you happy?”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“Your good intentions are not enough; you have to be artful. We may be filled with goodwill; we may be motivated by the desire to make the other person happy, but out of our clumsiness, we make them unhappy. Walking, eating, breathing, talking, and working are all opportunities to practice creating happiness inside you and around you. Mindful living is an art, and each of us has to train to be an artist.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love

“Often, we get crushes on others not because we truly love and understand them, but to distract ourselves from our suffering. When we learn to love and understand ourselves and have true compassion for ourselves, then we can truly love and understand another person.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“The more you understand, the more you love; the more you love, the more you understand.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“Sometimes we feel empty; we feel a vacuum, a great lack of something. We don’t know the cause; it’s very vague, but that feeling of being empty inside is very strong. We expect and hope for something much better so we’ll feel less alone, less empty. The desire to understand ourselves and to understand life is a deep thirst. There’s also the deep thirst to be loved and to love. We are ready to love and be loved. It’s very natural. But because we feel empty, we try to find an object of our love. Sometimes we haven’t had the time to understand ourselves, yet we’ve already found the object of our love. When we realize that all our hopes and expectations of course can’t be fulfilled by that person, we continue to feel empty. You want to find something, but you don’t know what to search for. In everyone there’s a continuous desire and expectation; deep inside, you still expect something better to happen. That is why you check your email many times a day!”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“YOU ARE A FLOWER Every child is born in the garden of humanity as a flower. Each flower differs from every other flower. There are many messages in our society that tell us, even when we’re young people, that there’s something wrong with us and that if we just buy the right product, or look a certain way, or have the right partner, that will fix it. As grown-ups, we can remind young people that they’re already beautiful as they are; they don’t have to be someone else.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“Be a friend to yourself. If you are a true friend to yourself, you can be a true friend to a loved one. A romantic crush is short-lived, but friendship and loving kindness can last very long and continue to grow.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love

“If you have the impression that you know the other person inside and out, you are wrong. Are you sure that you even know yourself? Every person is a world to explore.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“Resilient trees can weather a violent storm because their roots are deep and firm.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“A POT IN SEARCH OF A LID Very often we feel like a pot without a lid. We believe that our lid is somewhere in the world and that if we look very hard, we’ll find the right lid to cover our pot. The feeling of emptiness is always there inside us. When we contemplate the other person, sometimes we think we see what we feel we lack. We think we need someone else to lean on, to take refuge in, and to diminish our suffering. We want to be the object of another person’s attention and contemplation. We want someone who will look at us and embrace our feeling of emptiness and suffering with his energy of mindfulness. Soon we become addicted to that kind of energy; we think that without that attention, we can’t live. It helps us feel less empty and helps us forget the block of suffering inside. When we ourselves can’t generate the energy to take care of ourselves, we think we need the energy of someone else. We focus on the need and the lack rather than generating the energy of mindfulness, concentration, and insight that can heal our suffering and help the other person as well.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love. That’s why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“Ask yourself, “Who can I make smile this morning?” This is the art of creating happiness.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love

“We absorb and reflect what is around us. If we live in a place where people are angry and violent, then eventually we’ll become like them.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love

“The more you cultivate joy, the more joy you will feel and be able to share.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“The second element of true love is compassion. Compassion is the capacity to understand the suffering in oneself and in the other person. If you understand your own suffering, you can help him to understand his suffering. Understanding suffering brings compassion and relief. You can transform your own suffering and help transform the suffering of the other person with the practice of mindfulness and looking deeply.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

“Reconciliation can also be with your own self. If you don’t reconcile with yourself, happiness with another person is impossible.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love

“True love is made of four elements: loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love