105 Mindfulness Quotes

In the whirlwind of our daily lives, taking a moment to pause and reflect can make all the difference. Mindfulness invites us to be fully present and engaged in the here and now, fostering a deeper connection with ourselves and the world around us. Whether you’re new to the practice or a seasoned enthusiast, words of wisdom can provide powerful guidance and inspiration. We've curated a collection of the top 105 mindfulness quotes to help center your thoughts, uplift your spirit, and bring a tranquil focus to your day. Get ready to explore the transformative power of mindfulness through these insightful and thought-provoking quotes.

1. “The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

2. “When you have reached the point where you no longer expect a response, you will at last be able to give in such a way that the other is able to receive, and be grateful. When Love has matured and, through a dissolution of the self into light, become a radiance, then shall the Lover be liberated from dependence upon the Beloved, and the Beloved also be made perfect by being liberated from the Lover.” - Dag Hammarskjöld

3. “Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.[Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Nov. 1980), pp. 16-32]” - Barbara Tuchman

4. “The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.” - Black Elk

5. “A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein

6. “Pity me that the heart is slow to learnWhat the swift mind beholds at every turn.” - Edna St. Vincent Millay

7. “When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.” - Milan Kundera

8. “Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.” - Albert Einstein

9. “I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—As if my Brain had split—I tried to match it—Seam by Seam—But could not make it fit.” - Emily Dickinson

10. “You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.” - Giovanni Boccaccio

11. “I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.” - Leo Tolstoy

12. “There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save.” - Isaac Asimov

13. “Athletes need to enjoy their training. They don't enjoy going down to the track with a coach making them do repetitions until they're exhausted. From enjoyment comes the will to win.” - Arthur Lydiard

14. “Sometimes, being true to yourself means changing your mind. Self changes, and you follow.” - Vera Nazarian

15. “I have set off and found that there is no end to even the simplest journey of the mind. I begin, and straight away a hundred alternative routes present themselves. I choose one, no sooner begin, than a hundred more appear. Every time I try to narrow down my intent I expand it, and yet those straits and canals still lead me to the open sea, and then I realize how vast it all is, this matter of the mind. I am confounded by the shining water and the size of the world.” - Jeanette Winterson

16. “Most people believe the mind to be a mirror, more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them, not realizing on the contrary that the mind is itself the principal element of creation.” - Rabindranath Tagore

17. “A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.” - John Henry Newman

18. “Preston, I don't think this creature could ever find its way into your head. Quite apart from anything else, it seems pretty crowded and complicated to me.” - Terry Pratchett

19. “Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality-call it an alternate reality-to prove the reality of events. To what extent facts we recognize as such really are as they seem, and to what extent these are facts merely because we label them as such, is an impossible distinction to draw. Therefore, in order to pin down reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. An endless chain is created within our consciousness, and it is the very maintenance of this chain that produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist.” - Haruki Murakami

20. “Most of us go through each day looking for what we saw yesterday And, not surprisingly, that is what we find.” - James A. Kitchens

21. “To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.” - J. Krishnamurti

22. “The heart has its order, the mind has its own, which uses principles and demonstrations. The heart has a different one. We do not prove that we ought to be loved by setting out in order the causes of love; that would be absurd.” - Blaise Pascal

23. “The mind creates those things that exist.” - Terry Tempest Williams

24. “There are some things your mind has been hiding from you.” - Obert Skye

25. “Never worry alone. When anxiety grabs my mind, it is self-perpetuating. Worrisome thoughts reproduce faster than rabbits, so one of the most powerful ways to stop the spiral of worry is simply to disclose my worry to a friend... The simple act of reassurance from another human being [becomes] a tool of the Spirit to cast out fear -- because peace and fear are both contagious.” - John Ortberg

26. “We take it for granted that Jesus was not interested in political life: his mission was purely religious. Indeed we have witnessed . . . the 'iconization' of the life of Jesus: 'This is a Jesus of hieratic, stereotyped gestures, all representing theological themes. In this way, the life of Jesus is no longer a human life, submerged in history, but a theological life -- an icon.” - Gustavo Gutierrez

27. “The very idea of making shoes by hand boggled her mind.” - Scott Westerfeld

28. “Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked” - Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

29. “You're wrong. The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things. If you believe in me at all, then believe this: I promise you I will find it. Everything depends on this." "I believe you," she whispers after a moment. "Please find my mind.” - Haruki Murakami

30. “Joy blooms where minds and hearts are open.” - Jonathan Lockwood Huie

31. “Leaving out appraisal also would render the biological description of the phenomena of emotion vulnerable to the caricature that emotions without an appraisal phase are meaningless events. It would be more difficult to see how beautiful and amazingly intelligent emotions can be, and how powerfully they can solve problems for us.” - Antonio Damasio

32. “Stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it.” - Frank McCourt

33. “Your mind is your kingdom, and there you are ruler” - Jack Addington

34. “There is no UFO and also there is no alien, at least not in common mind nor reference.” - Toba Beta

35. “Exceed not thy actions, but limit not thy mind.” - Gary Davis

36. “... the mind was designed not to defend what we want, but to discover what is ultimately true, which should shape our wants and satisfy them more deeply with God. The purpose of the mind is not to rationalize subjective preferences, but to recognize objective reality and to help the heart revel in God.” - John Piper

37. “Mattie sat at the table, obsessing, orbiting around herself. She was sick of her worried, hostile mind. It would have killed her long before, she felt, if it hadn't needed the transportation.” - Anne Lamott

38. “A veiled Mind is more enticing than all the nude men lining up the Seine, during Summer.” - AainaA-Ridtz A R

39. “The heart has its reasons but the mind makes the excuses.” - Amit Abraham

40. “Smartass Disciple: Master, you should teach people not to do war to each other.Master of Stupidity: I should teach people how to win their minds of their wars.” - Toba Beta

41. “When examining evidence relevant to a given belief, people are inclined to see what they expect to see, and conclude what they expect to conclude. Information that is consistent with our pre-existing beliefs is often accepted at face value, whereas evidence that contradicts them is critically scrutinized and discounted. Our beliefs may thus be less responsive than they should to the implications of new information” - Thomas Gilovich

42. “We humans seem to be extremely good at generating ideas, theories, and explanations that have the ring of plausibility. We may be relatively deficient, however, in evaluating and testing our ideas once they are formed” - Thomas Gilovich

43. “For desired conclusions, we ask ourselves, "Can I believe this?", but for unpalatable conclusions we ask, "Must I believe this?” - Thomas Gilovich

44. “But there were too many points at which the other self could invade the self he wanted to preserve, and there were too many forms of invasion: certain words, sounds, lights, actions his hands or feet performed, and if he did nothing at all, heard and saw nothing, the shouting of some triumphant inner voice that shocked him and cowed him.” - Patricia Highsmith

45. “Looking at beauty in the world, is the first step of purifying the mind.” - Amit Ray

46. “O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it all! A secret theater of speechless monologue and prevenient counsel, an invisible mansion of all moods, musings, and mysteries, an infinite resort of disappointments and discoveries. A whole kingdom where each of us reigns reclusively alone, questioning what we will, commanding what we can. A hidden hermitage where we may study out the troubled book of what we have done and yet may do. An introcosm that is more myself than anything I can find in a mirror. This consciousness that is myself of selves, that is everything, and yet is nothing at all - what is it?” - Julian Jaynes

47. “The universe is full of men going through the same motions in the same surroundings, but carrying within themselves, and projecting around them, universes as mutually remote as the constellations.” - Emmanuel Mounier

48. “Since the beginning of time, people have been trying to change the world so that they can be happy. This hasn’t ever worked, because it approaches the problem backward. What The Work gives us is a way to change the projector—mind—rather than the projected. It’s like when there’s a piece of lint on a projector’s lens. We think there’s a flaw on the screen, and we try to change this person and that person, whomever the flaw appears on next. But it’s futile to try to change the projected images. Once we realize where the lint is, we can clear the lens itself. This is the end of suffering, and the beginning of a little joy in paradise.” - Byron Katie

49. “Don't live in regret! It is such a useless idea.Use the memory to prevent us do bad things!Regret is a childish wish, or an empty hope,trying to revise the bitter memory of the past.” - Toba Beta

50. “The vivid force of his mind prevailed, and he fared forth far beyond the flaming ramparts of the heavens and traversed the boundless universe in thought and mind.” - Lucretius

51. “As long as reading is for us the instigator whose magic keys have opened the door to those dwelling-places deep within us that we would not have known how to enter, its role in our lives is salutary. It becomes dangerous, on the other hand, when, instead of awakening us to the personal life of the mind, reading tends to take its place, when the truth no longer appears to us as an ideal which we can realize only by the intimate progress of our own thought and the efforts of our heart, but as something material, deposited between the leaves of books like a honey fully prepared by others and which we need only take the trouble to reach down from the shelves of libraries and then sample passively in a perfect repose of mind and body.” - Marcel Proust

52. “In El-harím, there lived a man, a man with yellow eyes.To me, he said, "Beware the whispers, for they whisper lies.Do not wrestle with the demons of the dark,Else upon your mind they'll place a mark;Do not listen to the shadows of the deep,Else they haunt you even when you sleep.” - Christopher Paolini

53. “Emotional baggage,” which is carried over from the past, colors our perceptions. Likewise, past conclusions and beliefs, based on reasoning that may or may not have been accurate, also tint our perception of reality. Retaining our capacity for reason is common sense, but definite conclusions and beliefs keep us from seeing life as it really is at any given moment.Emotional reactions can be unreasonable, and reason can be flawed. It’s difficult to have deep confidence in either one, especially when they’re often at war with each other. But the universal mind exists in the instant, in a moment beyond time, and it sees the universe as it literally is. It’s the universe perceiving itself. It is, moreover, something we can have absolute confidence in, and with that confidence, we can maintain a genuinely positive attitude.” - H.E. Davey

54. “Each action we take is an act of self-expression. We often think of large-scale or important deeds as being indications of our real selves, but even how we sharpen a pencil can reveal something about our feelings at that moment. Do we sharpen the pencil carefully or nervously so that it doesn’t break? Do we bother to pay attention to what we’re doing? How do we sharpen the same pencil when we’re angry or in a hurry? Is it the same as when we’re calm or unhurried?Even the smallest movement discloses something about the person executing the action because it is the person who’s actually performing the deed. In other words, action doesn’t happen by itself, we make it happen, and in doing so we leave traces of ourselves on the activity. The mind and body are interrelated.” - H.E. Davey

55. “A soul gives power to the mind; and the mind empowers the soul” - Jeremy Aldana

56. “When you make a choice, you change the future.” - Deepak Chopra

57. “The museums in children’s minds, I think, automatically empty themselves in times of utmost horror—to protect the children from eternal grief.For my own part, though: It would have been catastrophe if I had forgotten my sister at once. I had never told her so, but she was the person I had always written for. She was the secret of whatever artistic unity I had ever achieved. She was the secret of my technique. Any creation which has any wholeness and harmoniousness, I suspect, was made by an artist or inventor with an audience of one in mind.Yes, and she was nice enough, or Nature was nice enough, to allow me to feel her presence for a number of years after she died—to let me go on writing for her. But then she began to fade away, perhaps because she had more important business elsewhere.” - Kurt Vonnegut

58. “We think to dance, and dance in thought. But to hibernate in the mind, is to bring upon us an apocalypse of the Soul.” - Ilyas Kassam

59. “You may die a hundred deaths without a break in the mental turmoil. Or, you may keep your body and die only in the mind. The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.” - Nisargadatta Maharaj

60. “Mirrors are perpetually deceitful. They lie and steal your true self. They reveal only what your mind believes it sees” - Dee Remy

61. “Seemingly minor yet persistent things penetrate the mind over time making it difficult to ever realize the impact; hence, though quite unfortunate, the most dangerous forms of corruption are those that are subtle and below the radar.” - Criss Jami

62. “The learnin' mind is the livin' mind... an' any sort o' smart is truesome smart, old smart or new, high smart or low.” - David Mitchell

63. “You never know what lurks just beneath the surface of my fragile sanity.” - Ashly Lorenzana

64. “The fear is not real, Dil Bahadur; it is only in your mind, like all other things. Our thoughts form what we believe to be reality.” - Isabel Allende

65. “If you can't change your mind, you can't change anything.” - Orna Ross

66. “There's no better way to inform and expand you mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature.” - Stephen R. Covey

67. “Mind your mind, soon, you will mine from it.” - Ogwo David Emenike

68. “I don't seem able to get it straight in my mind....” - Ken Kesey

69. “Body and soul can never be marriedI need to become who I already am and will bellow forever at this incongruity which has committed me to hell” - Sarah Kane

70. “She has man's brain--a brain that a man should have were he much gifted--and woman's heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me when He made that so good combination.” - Bram Stoker

71. “His mind scolded him for his stupidity and urged him to forget her but his heart had no justifications for its stand. It remained unmoved, its solidarity unaffected, its arrogance still holding.” - Faraaz Kazi

72. “It’s a sort of furtiveness … Like we were a generation of furtive. You know, with an inner knowledge there’s no use flaunting on that level, the level of the ‘public’, a kind of beatness – I mean, being right down to it, to ourselves, because we all really know where we are – and a weariness with all the forms, all the conventions of the world … It’s something like that. So I guess you might say we’re a beat generation.” - Jack Kerouac

73. “Memoria - fie memoria individuală, fie memoria colectivă care este cultura - are o dublă funcție. Una, într-adevăr, e să conserve anumite date, cealaltă să cufunde în uitare informațiile ce nu ne folosesc și care ne-ar putea încărca inutil mințile.” - Jean-Claude Carrière

74. “For the first time she could see a man's head naked of its skull. Saw the cunning thoughts race in and out through the caves and promontories of his mind long before they darted through the tunnel of his mouth.” - Zora Neale Hurston

75. “Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me.” - Markus Zusak

76. “Not that it matters, when you dream, there's no outside or in. Your mind is an unimaginable bloom. A willow catkin as big as the moon. With billions of anthers, shaking pollen like stars. It may seem strange, but in this boundless place --- You are not alone.” - Rich Shapero

77. “She's a writer. The kind of writer who wouldn't be published outside. She believes that when one deals with words, one deals with the mind.” - Ayn Rand

78. “The interpretation of Dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind” - Sigmund Freud

79. “After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.” - Baruch Spinoza

80. “The beliefs you hold strongly in your mind will become your dreams and in time become your reality.” - Steven Redhead

81. “Open your mind to the infinite possibilities that exist for you; then create within your reality the things that you desire.” - Steven Redhead

82. “Mind and body are in many ways opposite from each other, and mind and body must each act according to its own principles. Nonetheless, while the mind and body are different in disposition, they are complementary opposites that form a single whole. For us to sustain mind and body harmony, and function as whole human beings, we need to discover the actual nature of the mind’s characteristics.” - H.E. Davey Japanese Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation

83. “Freedom of mind is the real freedom. A person whose mind is not free though he may not be in chains, is a slave, not a free man. One whose mind is not free, though he may not be in prison, is a prisoner and not a free man. One whose mind is not free though alive, is no better than dead. Freedom of mind is the proof of one's existence.” - Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar

84. “Being aware is being aware of one's own mind and the games it plays on itself.” - Robin Macnaughton

85. “The most incredible architectureIs the architecture of Self,which is ever changing, evolving, revolving and has unlimited beauty and light inside which radiates outwards for everyone to see and feel. With every in breatheyou are adding to your lifeand every out breathe you are releasing what is not contributing to your life.Every breathe is a re-birth.” - Allan Rufus

86. “My eyes in tearsHeart never sighsMy mind never fearsI conquer the lies” - Munia Khan

87. “Life is like a sandwich!Birth as one slice,and death as the other.What you put in-between the slices is up to you.Is your sandwich tasty or sour?Allan Rufus.org” - Allan Rufus

88. “To resist the frigidity of old age, one must combine the body, the mind, and the heart. And to keep these in parallel vigor one must exercise, study, and love.” - Charles-Victor De Bonstettin

89. “Infernal world, and thou profoundest HellReceive thy new Possessor: One who bringsA mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.The mind is its own place, and in it selfCan make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.” - John Milton

90. “It is my opinion that the isolated mind loses its purchase on reality all too easily and becomes prone to fantasy.” - Frank Tallis

91. “[...] certain it is that minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort, and like them, are often successfully cured by remedies in themselves very nauseous and unpalatable.” - Charles Dickens

92. “If your mind is expansive and unfettered, you will find yourself in a more accommodating world, a place that's endlessly interesting and alive. That quality isn't inherent in the place but in your state of mind.” - Pema Chodron

93. “But there is saying, and there is doing, and almost always people do something better than they can talk about it, as though the minded body defeats every attempt to select out only the mind part as deserving sole responsibility for the success.” - Alice Koller

94. “...I pray this winter be gentle and kind - a season of rest from the wheel of the mind...” - John Geddes A Familiar Rain

95. “An odd thing about perception is that when we identify some new thing with one or more of our five senses, it is not really, immutably real -- it is a passing will o’ the wisp, an artifact of the senses and the translations of the brain until we get used to it and we give it a home in our hearts” - Nigel Hey

96. “We're all born with the greatest treasures we'll ever have in life. One of those treasures is your mind, another is your heart.” - Susan Abulhawa

97. “A man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

98. “A heartful mind can always see better than mindless eyes” - Munia Khan

99. “Living in a bookshop is like living in a warehouse of explosives. Those shelves are ranked with the most furious combustibles in the world--the brains of men.” - Christopher Morley

100. “You’re an English major, aren't you?” “Hey!” Immediately retreating, Keith swatted at him with a dishcloth. “Leave my brain alone. It’s resting.” “Sorry, sorry.” He leaned away, hands up to display his surrender. “I didn't mean it, I take it back.” “You’d better” - Matthew Haldeman-Time

101. “I do not think either virginity or old age contemptible, and some of the shrewdest minds I have met inhabited the bodies of old maids.” - C.S. Lewis

102. “Normally we divide the external world into that which we consider to be good or valuable, bad or worthless, or neither. Most of the time these discriminations are incorrect or have little meaning. For example, our habitual way of categorizing people as friends, enemies, and strangers depending on how they make us feel is both incorrect and a great obstacle to developing impartial love for all living beings. Rather than holding so tightly to our discriminations of the external world, it would be much more beneficial if we learned to discriminate between valuable and worthless states of mind.” - Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

103. “The maladies of the spirit alone, in abstracto, that is, error and sin, can be called diseases of the mind only per analogiam. They come not within the jurisdiction of the physician, but that of the teacher or clergyman, who again are called physicians of the mind only per analogiam.” - Ernst Von Feuchtersleben

104. “Keep a positive mind. Remember, a failed attempt doesn’t make you a failure—giving up does.” - Lorii Myers

105. “Visualization engages the mind and encourages the body.” - Lorii Myers