Pāli Canon Quotes

30 Sourced Quotes

In regard to things that are past, future and present the Tathagata is a speaker at a suitable time, a speaker of fact, on what has bearing, of Dhamma, of Discipline. Therefore is he called Tathagata.

Pāli Canon
Avoiding both these extremes, [indulgence of sense pleasures, devotion to self-mortification] the Tathagata has realized the Middle Path: it gives vision, it gives knowledge, and it leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment, to Nirvana.
First Sermon of the Buddha

Pāli Canon
Even as rain breaks not through a well-thatched house, passions break not through a well-guarded mind.

Pāli Canon
For hate is not conquered by hate: hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal.

Pāli Canon
Who can trace the invisible path of the man who soars in the sky of liberation, the infinite Void without beginning, whose passions are peace and over whom pleasures have no power? His path is as difficult to trace as that of the birds in the air.

Pāli Canon
I see no other single hindrance such as this hindrance of ignorance, obstructed by which mankind for a long long time runs on and circles on.

Pāli Canon
To what extent is the world called 'empty' Lord?
Because it is empty of self or what belongs to self, it is therefore said: 'The world is empty.'

Pāli Canon
The instructed disciple of the Aryans well and wisely reflects on Conditioned Genesis itself: If this is that comes to be; from the arising of this that arises; if this is not that does not come to be; from the stopping of this that is stopped.

Pāli Canon
It is called Nirvana because of the getting rid of craving.

Pāli Canon
I [Buddha] directed my mind to the knowledge of the extinction of the outflows. I understood it as it really is: This is suffering, this its arising, this its stopping, this the course leading to its stopping.

Pāli Canon
There are no waves in the depths of the sea: it is still, unbroken. It is the same with the monk. He is still, without any quiver of desire, without a remnant on which to build pride and desire.

Pāli Canon
Because there is, monks, an unborn, not become, not made, uncompounded, therefore an escape can be shown for what is born, has become, is made, is compounded.

Pāli Canon
If a man should conquer in battle a thousand and a thousand more, and another man should conquer himself, his would be the greater victory, because the greatest of victories is the victory over oneself.

Pāli Canon
As the great ocean has but one taste, that of salt, so has this Dharma and Discipline but one taste, the taste of Freedom.

Pāli Canon
1) Refraining from taking life. 2) Refraining from taking what is not given. 3) Refraining from incontinence. 4) Refraining from falsehood. 5) Refraining from strong drink, intoxicants, and liquor, which are occasions of carelessness.
The Five Precepts

Pāli Canon
Precisely this do I teach, now as formerly: ill and the stopping of ill.

Pāli Canon
Monks, I will teach you Dhamma—the Parable of the Raft—for crossing over, not for retaining.

Pāli Canon
Of all beings this one is perfect, this man is the pinnacle, the ultimate, the hero of creatures! This is the man who, from the forest of the Masters, will set the Wheel of Teaching turning—the roar of the lion, King of Beasts!

Pāli Canon
Is it fitting to consider what is impermanent, painful, and subject to change as, 'This is mine, this am I, this is my self'?

Pāli Canon
I go, reverend one, to the Lord and to the doctrine and the Order of monks. May the Lord take me as a lay disciple from this day forth while life lasts, who have gone to him as a refuge.
He [Yasa] was the first layman in the world received by the triple utterance.

Pāli Canon
The Noble Truth of Suffering is this: Birth is suffering, ageing is suffering; sickness is suffering; death is suffering; sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; association with the unpleasant is suffering; dissociation from the pleasant is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering—in brief, the five aggregates of attachment are suffering.
First Sermon of the Buddha

Pāli Canon
The Noble Truth of the Path leading to the Cessation of suffering is this: It is simply the Noble Eightfold Path, namely right view; right thought; right speech; right action; right livelihood; right effort; right mindfulness; right concentration.
First Sermon of the Buddha

Pāli Canon
Who sees Conditioned Genesis sees Dhamma; who sees Dhamma sees Conditioned Genesis.

Pāli Canon
'Now, monks, I declare to you: all conditioned things are of a nature to decay—strive on untiringly.' These were the Tathagata's last words.

Pāli Canon
What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind.

Pāli Canon
Dhamma has been taught by me without making a distinction between esoteric and exoteric. For the Tathagata has not the closed fist of a teacher in respect of mental states.

Pāli Canon
I teach Dhamma that is lovely at the beginning, lovely in the middle and lovely at the ending, with the spirit and the letter.

Pāli Canon
If one does not behold any self or anything of the nature of self in the five groups of grasping (material shape, feeling, perception, the impulses, consciousness), one is an Arahant, the outflows extinguished.

Pāli Canon
In the Sakyan clan there was born
A Buddha, peerless among men,
Conqueror of all, repelling Mara—
The Visioned One sees all.

Pāli Canon
The person who is searching for his own happiness should pull out the dart that he has stuck in himself, the arrow-head of grieving, of desiring, of despair.

Pāli Canon