85+ Eckhart Tolle Quotes From The Popular Spiritual Teacher

Luca Demetriou
Dec 12, 2023 By Luca Demetriou
Originally Published on Mar 16, 2021
The Power of Now Book by Eckhart Tolle.
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Age: 0-99
Read time: 13.3 Min

The New York Times has called him the most popular spiritual author of the nation.

His works provide readers with spiritual stability and knowledge about living a peaceful life. He speaks about love, happiness, life, and every other emotion and sentiment related to a person. His quotes provide us with spiritual calmness and so present to you the best Eckhart Tolle quotes from the popular spiritual teacher.

If you enjoy reading this article, make sure to read Dogen quotes and spiritual awakening quotes from our collection.

Present Moment Eckhart Tolle Quotes

It takes forever to understand the importance of life and how sad it is to waste your life. Here are some of the most amazing Eckhart Tolle quotes to help you live life to the fullest. Are you looking for Eckhart Tolle's quotes on what to do if you are forced to fight? Find out here in this list!

  • '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.'
  • 'It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.'
  • '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.'
  • '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.'
  • 'The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.'
  • 'Let me say it again: the present moment is all you ever have.'
  • 'Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.'
  • 'So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind.'
  • 'Life is the dancer and you are the dance.'
  • 'Being must be felt. It can’t be thought.'
  • 'Life isn’t as serious as the mind makes it out to be.'
  • 'You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.'– A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life’s Purpose, ‘Eckhart Tolle.'
  • 'Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.'
  • 'Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.'
  • 'This, too, will pass.'
  • 'Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living.'
  • 'In today’s rush we all think too much, seek too much, want too much and forget about the joy of just Being.'
  • 'What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.'
  • 'The significance is hiding in the insignificant. Appreciate everything.'
  • 'If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me.'
  • '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.'
  • 'Instead of asking ‘what do I want from life?’ A more powerful question is, ‘what does life want from me?’'
  • 'Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make now the primary focus of your life.'
  • 'If you are not living this moment, you are not really living.'
  • 'The more you live in the present moment, the more the fear of death disappears.'
  • 'Accept- then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.'
  • 'It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.'
  • 'Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live it.'
  • 'It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up.'
  • 'The power of creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating good present.'

Eckhart Tolle Love Quotes

Love is the most complicated emotion, which brings happiness, sadness, anger, hatred and much more. People fail to understand the true meaning of love. Here are a few quotes by Eckhart Tolle to help you understand love better along with Eckhart Tolle quotes 'You Are The Universe'.

Fountain pen on a grey table.
  • 'The entire phenomenal universe exists because of the tension between the opposites. Hot and cold, growth and decay, gain and loss, success and failure, the polarities that are part of existence, and of course part of every relationship.'
  • 'As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.'
  • 'The object of love is interchangeable, as interchangeable as the object of egoic wanting. Some people go through many relationships. They fall in love and out of love many times. They love a person for a while until it doesn’t work anymore, because no person can permanently cover up that pain.'
  • 'Internal and external are ultimately one. When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak, and act differently. Love and compassion arise, and they affect the world.'
  • 'All the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace — arise from beyond the mind.'
  • 'Love and joy are inseparable from your natural state of inner connectedness with Being. Glimpses of love and joy or brief moments of deep peace are possible whenever a gap occurs in the stream of thought.'
  • 'Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you.'
  • 'Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance.”
  • 'in Being, are you equal, and only when you find the formless dimension in yourself can there be true love in that relationship. The Presence that you are, the timeless I Am, recognizes itself in another, and the other, the child in this case, feels loved, that is to say, recognized.'
  • 'True communication is communion — the realization of oneness, which is love.'
  • 'If you are in the habit of creating suffering for yourself, then you are probably creating suffering for others too.'
  • 'To the ego, loving and wanting are the same, whereas true love has no wanting in it, no desire to possess or for your partner to change.'
  • '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.'
  • 'What is commonly called ‘falling in love’ is in most cases an intensification of egoic wanting and needing. You become addicted to another person, or rather to your image of that person. It has nothing to do with true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever.'
  • 'Real love doesn’t make you suffer. How could it? It doesn’t suddenly turn into hate, nor does real joy turn into pain.'
  • 'The longing for love that is in every child is the longing to be recognized, not on the level of form, but on the level of Being.'
  • 'Love and do what you will.'
  • 'Love as a continuous state is as yet very rare – as rare as conscious human beings. Brief and elusive glimpses of love, however, are possible whenever there is a gap in the stream of mind.'
  • 'You cannot love your partner one moment and attack him or her the next. True love has no opposite.'
  • 'You cannot love your partner one moment and attack him or her the next. True love has no opposite.'
  • 'To love is to recognize yourself in another.'
  • 'Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the ‘love’ of ego.'

Eckhart Tolle Quotes On Happiness and Peace

  • 'Happiness the most important aspect of being alive. Without happiness a person tends to be dead even when he is alive. People spend their entire life in search of happiness. Here are a few Eckhart Tolle quotes to help you find your happiness.'
  • 'Above all, the only thing you have to heal is the present thought. Get that right and the whole picture will change into one of harmony and joy.'
  • 'All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.'
  • 'All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are caused by too much future, and not enough presence.'
  • 'All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being.'
  • 'Things and conditions can give you pleasure but they cannot give you joy- joy arises from within.'
  • 'If there isn't an emanation of love and joy, complete presence and openness toward all beings, then it is not enlightenment.'
  • 'Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace? Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.'
  • 'The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your 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.'– Eckhart Tolle, ‘A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life’s Purpose.'
  • 'Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.'
  • 'Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.'– Eckhart Tolle, ‘A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life’s Purpose.'
  • 'On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do.'– Eckhart Tolle, ‘The Power Of Now: A Guide To Spiritual Enlightenment’.
  • 'Don’t seek happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness'– Eckhart Tolle, ‘A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life’s Purpose.'
  • 'The moment that judgement stops through acceptance of what it is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.'– Eckhart Tolle, ‘Practicing The Power Of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, And Exercises From The Power Of Now.'
  • 'With stillness comes the benediction of Peace.'– Eckhart Tolle, ‘A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life’s Purpose.'
  • 'Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.'– Eckhart Tolle, ‘A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life’s Purpose.'
  • 'The joy of Being, which is the only true happiness, cannot come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person, or event—through anything that happens. That joy cannot come to you—ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are.'– Eckhart Tolle, ‘A New Earth: Create A Better Life.'
  • 'Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you.'– Eckhart Tolle, ‘A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life’s Purpose.'
  • 'Form is emptiness, emptiness is form states the Heart Sutra, one of the best known ancient Buddhist texts. The essence of all things is emptiness.'– Eckhart Tolle, ‘The Power Of Now: A Guide To Spiritual Enlightenment.'
  • '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.'
  • 'Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.'
  • 'Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.'
  • 'Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.'
  • 'Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serves as a foundation for a good future. No matter how much effort you make.'
  • 'people look to time in expectation that it will eventually make them happy, but you cannot find true happiness by looking toward the future.'
  • 'Any action is often better than no action. Especially, if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time.'

Famous Eckhart Tolle Quotes On State Of Consciousness and Spirituality

Eckhart Tolle quotes offer you the strength to fight off bitterness and all forms of hate. Here are some of the best quotes by Eckhart Tolle to make your day better and say yes to life.

  • 'Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.'
  • 'Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much.'
  • 'Become conscious of being conscious.'
  • 'Nothing that comes and goes is you.'
  • 'How is always more important than ‘what.’ See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it.'
  • 'The power is in you. The answer is in you. And you are the answer to all your searches: You are the goal. You are the answer. It’s never outside.'
  • 'To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for your inner state at any given moment. That means now.'
  • 'For what you do to others, you do to yourself.'
  • '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.'
  • 'Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.'– Eckhart Tolle, ‘A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life's Purpose.'
  • 'You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.'– Eckhart Tolle, ‘A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life's Purpose.'
  • 'You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.'
  • 'Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.'
  • 'Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose'
  • 'If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without.'– Eckhart Tolle, ‘The Power Of Now: A Guide To Spiritual Enlightenment.'
  • 'When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it's their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.'– Eckhart Tolle, ‘A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life's Purpose.'
  • 'Nothing has happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.'– Eckhart Tolle, ‘The Power Of Now: A Guide To Spiritual Enlightenment.'
  • 'All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no mind, from inner stillness.'
  • 'Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.'
  • 'Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.'
  • 'Being must be felt. It can't be thought.'
  • 'Was Jesus the son of God? Yes. But so are you. You just haven't realized it yet.'
  • If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.'
  • 'Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation of abundance.'
  • 'You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.'

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for Eckhart Tolle quotes, then why not take a look at Bob Proctor quotes, or James Allen quotes.

main image credit: Wild As Light / Shutterstock.com

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Written by Luca Demetriou

Bachelor of Arts specializing in English and Drama, Master of Arts specializing in Performance: Design and Practice

Luca Demetriou picture

Luca DemetriouBachelor of Arts specializing in English and Drama, Master of Arts specializing in Performance: Design and Practice

Experienced in writing and sub-editing, Luca holds a Bachelor's in English Literature and Drama from the University of Birmingham, where he served as the culture editor at Redbrick Paper. He is currently pursuing a Master's in Performance: Design and Practice at the University of the Arts in London, showcasing his passion for the arts, performance, and history. With a keen interest in traveling, Luca enjoys exploring new cultures and experiencing diverse perspectives.

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