34 Great Meditation Quotes to Inspire and Bring Peace • Yoga Basics

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Meditation can sometimes feel like a dull and tiresome task. We all know meditation will reduce our stress and boost our inner peace, yet we easily put it off or just plain forget to sit down for the practice. When we find ourselves avoiding the practice we usually just need a gentle nudge, and reading an inspirational quote on meditation can do the trick. We have collected a great collection of quotes to inspire and motivate you through your daily challenges to find more time for mindfulness, meditation, and contemplation.

34 Inspiring Meditation Quotes

Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. Pema Chödrön

Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching, you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence. Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you meditate regularly, even when you don’t feel like it, you will make great gains, for it will allow you to see how your thoughts impose limits on you. Your resistances to meditation are your mental prisons in miniature. Ram Dass

Many students of yoga perform their exercise in a haphazard way; then wonder why they do not ‘get anywhere’ and why they fail to feel communion with the Infinite even after apparently serious meditation. Paramahansa Yogananda

The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms. Thich Nhat Hanh

Having come to realize in the first stage of meditation that we are not our bodies, in the second stage we make an even more astounding discovery; we are not our minds either. Eknath Easwaran

Those who have succeeded in attaching or detaching their minds at will have succeeded in pratyahara, which means “gathering towards,” Checking the outgoing powers of the mind, freeing it from the thralldom of the senses. When we can do this, we shall really possess character; then alone we shall have taken a long step towards freedom. Before that, we are mere machines. Swami Vivekananda

Your concentration must come as easily as the breath. Fix yourself on one thing and try to hold onto it. All will come right. Meditation is sticking to one thought. That single thought keeps away other thoughts. The dissipated mind is a sign of its weakness. By constant meditation, it gains strength. Ramana Maharishi

In practicing meditation, we’re not trying to live up to some kind of ideal—quite the opposite. We’re just being with our experience, whatever it is. Pema Chödrön

With every breath, the old moment is lost; a new moment arrives. We exhale and we let go of the old moment. It is lost to us. In doing so, we let go of the person we used to be. We inhale and breathe in the moment that is becoming. In doing so, we welcome the person we are becoming. We repeat the process. This is meditation. This is renewal. This is life.
Lama Surya Das

Meditation is not the pursuit of an invisible path leading to some imaginal bliss. The meditative mind is seeing, watching, listening, without the word, without comment, without opinion, attentive to the movement of life in all its relationships throughout the day. Jiddu Krishnamurti

If the mind falls asleep, awaken it. Then if it starts wandering, make it quiet. If you reach the state where there is neither sleep nor movement of mind, stay still in that, the natural (real) state.”
Ramana Maharshi

When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace and love. Thich Nhat Hanh

First, meditation should be of a negative nature. Think away everything. Analyze everything that comes in the mind by the sheer action of the will. Next, assert what we really are—existence, knowledge, and bliss-being, knowing, and loving. Swami Vivekananda

When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. Alan Watts

Meditation speaks. It speaks in silence. It reveals. It reveals to the aspirant that matter and spirit are one, quantity and quality are one, the immanent and the transcendent are one. It reveals that life can never be the mere existence of seventy or eighty years between birth and death, but is, rather, Eternity itself. Sri Chinmoy

O yogi! If by one or two divings into the ocean of divine perception you do not find the pearls of God-communion, do not blame the ocean as lacking in the Divine Presence! Rather find fault with your skill in diving! Again and again, sink into the ocean of meditation and seize there the pearls of blessed communion! Paramahansa Yogananda

We carry about us the burden of what thousands of people have said and the memories of all our misfortunes. To abandon all that is to be alone, and the mind that is alone is not only innocent but young—not in time or age, but young, innocent, alive at whatever age—and only such a mind can see that which is truth and that which is not measurable by words. Jiddu Krishnamurti

Real attainment is to be fully conscious, to be aware of surroundings and the people around, to move among them all, but not to merge consciousness in the environment. One should remain in inner independent awareness. Ramana Maharishi

Along with faith comes the requirement for dogged persistence. At first, meditation may bring you mild highs or some relief from suffering. But there may come a time—just as there does in the development of any skill—when there will be a plateau. You may be bored, discouraged, or even negative and cynical. This is when you will need not only faith, but persistence. Ram Das

Meditation is the gate that opens that (infinite joy) to us. Prayers, ceremonials, and all the other forms of worship are simply kindergartens of meditation. You pray, you offer something. A certain theory existed that everything raised one’s spiritual power. The use of certain words, flowers, images, temples, ceremonials like the waving of lights brings the mind to that attitude, but that attitude is always in the human soul, nowhere else. Swami Vivekananda

Breathing is important in the practice of meditation because it is the faculty in us that is simultaneously voluntary and involuntary. You can feel that you are breathing, and equally you can feel that it is breathing you. So it is a sort of bridge between the voluntary world and the involuntary world—a place where they are one. Alan Watts

We can easily know whether we are meditating well or not just by the way we feel and see and think. Right after our meditation, if we have a good feeling for the world, then we know our meditation was good. If we see the world in a loving way in spite of its imperfections, if we can love the world even while seeing its teeming imperfections, then we know that our meditation was good. Sri Chinmoy

In meditation, we divest ourselves of all material conditions and feel our divine nature. We do not depend upon any external help in meditation. The touch of the soul can paint the brightest color even in the dingiest places; it can cast a fragrance over the vilest thing; it can make the wicked divine—and all enmity, all selfishness is effaced. Swami Vivekananda

When we meditate, we have to feel that we are entering into something vast and infinite: the vast ocean or the infinite blue sky. We are trying to plunge into something boundless and measureless. All around us is the infinite blue sky where Peace is reigning supreme. Sri Chinmoy

Let the mind be empty, and not filled with the things of the mind. Then there is only meditation and not a mediator who is meditating…The mind must be clear, without movement, and in the light of that clarity, the timeless will be revealed. Jiddu Krishnamurti

Because truth is exceedingly subtle and serene, the bliss of the Self can manifest only in a mind rendered subtle and steady by assiduous meditation. Ramana Maharishi

It is better to meditate a little bit with depth than to mediate long with the mind running here and there. If you do not make an effort to control the mind it will go on doing as it pleases, no matter how long you sit to meditate. Paramahansa Yogananda

Become conscious of being conscious. Say or think “I am”, and add nothing to it. Be aware of the stillness that follows the “I am”. Sense your presence, the naked unveiled, unclothed beingness. It is untouched by young or old, rich or poor, good or bad, or any other attributes. It is the spacious womb of all creation, all form. Ramana Maharishi

When we meditate every morning we are putting on armor for the day’s battle against our own impatience, inadequacy, resentment, and hostility. Eknath Easwaran

Mind is the creator of everything. You should therefore guide it to create only good. If you cling to a certain thought with dynamic will power, it finally assumes a tangible outward form. When you are able to employ your will always for constructive purposes, you become the controller of your destiny. Tame your mind and it will be your best friend. Leave it untamed and you will eventually work against yourself. Paramahansa Yogananda

There is nothing we experience—from the simple act of eating to the complications of work and relationships—that we cannot approach with the mindfulness and compassion we develop in our meditation. Thich Nhat Hanh

Meditation is a process of lightening up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and of realizing that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we’re doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we’re doing. The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive, and curious about ourselves.”
Pema Chödrön

When the mind has been trained to remain fixed on a certain internal or external location, there comes to it the power of flowing in an unbroken current, as it were, towards that point. This state is called Dhyana. Swami Vivekananda

How to Use Inspirational Quotes in Your Meditation Practice

Quotes are powerful bite-sized nuggets of wisdom that you can use to inspire or motivate yourself to meditate, contemplate and reflect. Here are a few practical ideas on how you could incorporate one or more of these inspirational quotes in your practice and life:

Print out the list of quotes and post them wherever you might need a reminder to practice mindfulness or meditation.
Create an intention card or small piece of artwork featuring a quote and place it on your personal altar or in your practice space.
Share your favorite quotes on social media to build communal support for your daily meditation practice.
Read a few quotes before you sit for meditation to set an intention or mood for your practice.
Use a quote as the seed thought for deep contemplation or journaling after your meditation practice.

Have a favorite meditation quote?

Did any of the above quotes resonate with you or give you a flash of insight? Do you have a quote that sparks your motivation to meditate that we did not include? Let us know in the comments below!

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