Eckhart Tolle citations

“You are the universe. expressing itself as a human for a little while.”

“Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to "die before you die" --- and find that there is no death.”

“The past has no power over the present moment.”

“I have lived with several Zen masters -- all of them cats.”

“It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.”

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”

“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”

“You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral. It is as it is.”

“When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself.”

“The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality”

“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?”

“Let me say it again:
the present moment is all you ever have.”

“The future is usually imagined as either better or worse than the present. If the imagined future is better, it gives you hope or pleasurable anticipation. If it is worse, it creates anxiety. Both are illusory.”

“Ask yourself what “problem” you have right now, not next year, tomorrow, or five minutes from now. What is wrong with this moment?”

“I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness.”

“When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.”

“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.”

“Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.”

“You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”

“A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever.”

“Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace? Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.”

“This, too, will pass.”

“You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle.”

“It is when we are trapped in incessant streams of compulsive thinking that the universe really disintegrates for us, and we lose the ability to sense the interconnectedness of all that exists.”

“The human condition: lost in thought.”

“On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do.”

“The foundation of greatness is honoring the small things of the present moment, instead of pursuing the idea of greatness.”

“Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought”