Are you going through a difficult time in life and find it hard to be happy and calm?
The following quotes have helped me gone through the hardest period of my life and I hope to share them with you. They are handpicked from The Power of Now, A New Earth and Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle. Take a moment to meditate on some of his most enlightening words to regain your peace of mind.
Table of Contents
Top 10 Eckhart Tolle Quotes
1. “Life isn’t as serious as the mind makes it out to be.”
2. “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.”
3. “Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world.”
4.“When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation, change the situation or accept it. All else is madness.”
5. If not now, when? Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
6.“You can only lose something that you have, you cannot lose something that you are.”
7. “Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there’”
8. “Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.”
9. “You are not the voice in your mind, but the one who is aware of it.”
10. Life is the dancer and you are the dance. Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
See also: Eckhart Tolle’s Quotes in Love and Relationships
The primary cause of unhappiness and suffering
11. “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral, which always is as it is. There is the situation or the fact, and here are my thoughts about it. Instead of making up stories, stay with the facts. For example, “I am ruined” is a story. It limits you and prevents you from taking effective action. “I have 50 cents left in my bank account” is a fact. Facing facts is always empowering.”
12. “The ego says, ‘I shouldn’t have to suffer,’ and that thought makes you suffer so much more. It is a distortion of the truth, which is always paradoxical. The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it.”
13. “I don’t want it to end, and so, as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end to its “problems” because they are part of its identity.”
14. “Stop looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love – you have a treasure within that is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.”
15. “Why do anxiety, stress, or negativity arise? Because you turned away from the present moment. And why did you do that? You thought something else was more important. One small error, one misperception, creates a world of suffering.”
16. Don't seek happiness. If you seek it, you won't find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness. Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
17. “The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly — you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.”
18. “Happiness is ever elusive, but freedom from unhappiness is attainable now, by facing what is rather than making up stories about it.”
19. “As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love – even the most simple action.”
20. “Why do anxiety, stress, or negativity arise? Because you turned away from the present moment. And why did you do that? You thought something else was more important. One small error, one misperception, creates a world of suffering.”
21. Suffering is necessary until you realize it is unnecessary. Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
22. “Is suffering really necessary? Yes and no. If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you, no humility, no compassion.”
23. “All problems are illusions of the mind.”
Related: More Eckhart Tolle’s wisdom on ego and the mind
Accept the changes in life
24. “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it, this will miraculously transform your whole life.”
25. “When you accept what is, every moment is the best moment. That is enlightenment.”
26. “To complain is always non acceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim.”
27. “Instead of asking “what do I want from life?,” a more powerful question is, “what does life want from me?”
28. “Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”
29. What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly. Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
30. “Life will give you whatever experience is the most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.”
31. “How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.”
32. “Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, a subtle energy vibration, is consciousness.”
33. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of… Click To Tweet
34. “Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time.”
Related: Inspiring Eckhart Tolle Quotes on Death to Help you Find Peace
Let go and surrender
35. “Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”
36. “Let go of thought, become still and alert and don’t try to understand or explain.” (More Wisdom about The Fear of Not Knowing https://bestestquote.com/fear-of-the-unknown-quotes/)
37. “Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.”
38. “To some people, surrender may have negative connotations, implying defeat, giving up, failing to rise to the challenges of life, becoming lethargic, and so on. True surrender, however, is something entirely different. It does not mean to passively put up with whatever situation you find yourself in and to do nothing about it. Nor does it mean to cease making plans or initiating positive action.”
39. “Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life.”
40. Surrender comes when you no longer ask, 'Why is this happening to me?' Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
41. “Anything you accept fully will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender.”
42. “Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal into gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into enlightenment.”
43. “When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. You do not need it anymore. Presence is the key. Now is the key.”
44. “To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad.
45. ” It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly.”
46. Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and becoming comfortable with not knowing. Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
Related: Quotes about Overcoming the Fear of Not Knowing
47. “Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now?”
48. “Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.”
Related: Letting go and surrender in relationships
Observe our pain and emotions (Don’t react…)
49. “Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.”
50. “Negative states of mind, such as anger, resentment, fear, envy, and jealousy, are products of the ego.”
51. “Rather than being your thoughts and emotions be the awareness behind them.”
52. “What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.”
53. Boredom, anger, sadness or fear are not ‘yours,’ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you. Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
54. “People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt, and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.”
55. “Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to – alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs, or a person – you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain.”
56. Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath. Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
57. “Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.”
Related: 85 Funny and Deep Life Lessons Calvin and Hobbes Give Us
Learn from nature and animals
58. “Learn from nature: See how everything gets accomplished and how the miracle of life unfolds without dissatisfaction or unhappiness.”
59. “Look at the lilies of the field, how they grow … They toil not, neither do they spin.”
60. “We could say that the totality – Life – wants the sapling to become a tree, but the sapling doesn’t see itself as separate from life and so wants nothing for itself. It is one with what Life wants. That’s why it isn’t worried or stressed. And if it has to die prematurely, it dies with ease. It is as surrendered in death as it is in life.”
61. “Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in ‘just being’. Allow nature to teach you stillness. When you look at a tree and perceive its stillness, you become still yourself.”
62. “Nature can show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds.”
63. Our animal friends’ non-reactive and forgiving natures can teach us positive spiritual lessons on a daily basis. Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
64. “We are a species that has lost its way. Everything natural, every flower or tree, and every animal have important lessons to teach us if we would only stop, look, and listen.”
65. “I call animals “guardians of Being,” especially animals that live with humans. Because, for many humans, it’s through their contact with animals they get in touch with that level of being.”
66. “Even ducks have taught me important spiritual lessons. Just watching them is a meditation. How peacefully they float along, at ease with themselves, totally present in the Now, dignified and perfect as only a mindless creature can be. Occasionally, however, two ducks will get into a fight – sometimes for no apparent reason, or because one duck has strayed into another’s private space. The fight usually lasts only for a few seconds, and then the ducks separate, swim off in opposite directions, and vigorously flap their wings a few times. They then continue to swim on peacefully as if the fight had never happened.”
67. I have lived with several Zen masters -- all of them cats. Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
68. ”Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now. Let it teach you Being. Let it teach you integrity — which means to be one, to be yourself, to be real. Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how not to make living and dying into a problem.”
69. “Thought subsides when you pet your dog or you have a purring cat on your chest. Even just watching an animal can take you out of your mind. It is more deeply connected with the source of life than most humans, and that rootedness in Being transmits itself to you.”
70. “The animals are at a level prior to thinking. They haven’t lost themselves in thought. We rise above thinking and then we meet them again, where we’re both in no-thought. There’s a deep connection.”
71. “The playfulness and joy of a dog, its unconditional love and readiness to celebrate life at any moment often contrast sharply with the inner state of the dog’s owner — depressed, anxious, burdened by problems, lost in thought, not present in the only place and only time there is: Here and Now. One wonders: living with this person, how does the dog manage to remain so sane, so joyous?”
Related: 80+ Quotes To Motivate You To Take Daily Walks In Nature
Embrace the Now
72. “The past has no power over the present moment.”
73. “The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.”
74. “You create a good future by creating a good present.”
75. “There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.”
76. “Enlightenment consciously chosen means to relinquish your attachment to past and future and to make the Now the main focus of your life.”
77. People don’t realize that now is all there ever is: there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind. Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
78. “Most humans are never fully present in the now because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now. And that’s a revelation for some people: to realize that your life is only ever now.”
79. “I have little use for the past and rarely think about it.”
80. “It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.”
81. “Wherever you look, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence for the reality of time—a rotting apple, your face in the bathroom mirror compared with your face in a photo taken 30 years ago—yet you never find any direct evidence, you never experience time itself. You only ever experience the present moment.”
82. Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose. Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
83. “Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.”
84. “Forget about your life situation and pay attention to your life. Your life situation exists in time. Your life is now. Your life situation is mind-stuff. Your life is real.”
85. “Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the now, the most precious thing there is.”
86. Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment. Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
87. “Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now; and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?”
88. “If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn’t know he is dreaming. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream.”
89. “To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation.”
Beyond happiness and unhappiness: Inner peace and stillness
90. Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace? Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not. Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
91. “Do you truly know what is positive and what is negative? Do you have the total picture? There have been many people for whom limitation, failure, loss, illness, or pain in whatever form turned out to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires. It gave them depth, humility, and compassion. It made them more real.”
92. “If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.”
93. “People believe themselves to be dependent on what happens for their happiness. They don’t realize that what happens is the most unstable thing in the universe. It changes constantly. They look upon the present moment as either marred by something that has happened and shouldn’t have or as deficient because of something that has not happened but should have. And so they miss the deeper perfection that is inherent in life itself, a perfection that lies beyond what is happening or not happening. Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is untouched by time.”
94. “If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace”
95. “To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.”
96. When you lose touch with your inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world. Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet
97. “Humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. … If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.”
98. “Be true to life by being true to your inner purpose. As you become present and thereby total in what you do, your actions become charged with spiritual power.”
99. “Being aware of your breath forces you into the present moment – the key to all inner transformation. Whenever you are conscious of the breath, you are absolutely present. You may also notice that you cannot think and be aware of your breathing. Conscious breathing stops your mind.”
100. Seen from a higher perspective, conditions are always positive. To be more precise: they are neither positive nor negative. They are as they are. And when you live in complete acceptance of what is - which is the only sane way to… Click To Tweet
101. “Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions.”
