60 Inspiring Yoga & Meditation Quotes
Sometimes with the stresses of day to day life bog you down, you need a little inspiration to get you back on track. Whatever your goals, be them mindfulness, meditation, or just inner peace, I’ve gathered together some of my favorite quotes. These quotes, proverbs, and sayings are perfect to inspire and motivate you through challenges. They also help foster mindfulness and a calm life. Use them as a daily mantra or to add inspiration to meditation and yoga spaces. Credit to the original author is given when known.
Inspiring Yoga & Meditation Quotes
-Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati
Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out.
-Katherine Dunham
Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.
-Lao Tzu
Silence is not an absence but a presence.
–Anne D. LeClaire
You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.
–Buddha
The more regularly and the more deeply you meditate, the sooner you will find yourself acting always from a center of peace.
-J. Donald Walters
Be conscious of yourself as consciousness alone, watch all the thoughts come and go. Come to the conclusion, by direct experience, that you are really consciousness itself, not its ephemeral contents.
–Annamalai Swami
I meditate so that I can inundate my entire being with the omnipotent power of peace.
-Sri Chinmoy
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
-Buddha
So what is a good meditator? The one who meditates.
–Allan Lokos
It feels good. Kinda like when you have to shut your computer down, just sometimes when it goes crazy, you just shut it down and when you turn it on, it’s okay again. That’s what meditation is to me.
–Ellen DeGeneres
The nature of illusion is that, when you see through it, it disappears.
–Mooji
Meditation teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured.
Go within every day and find the inner strength, so that the world cannot blow your candle out.
–Katherine Dunham
Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.
If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.
–Amit Ray
This is universal. You sit and observe your breath. You can’t say this is a Hindu breath or a Christian breath or a Muslim breath.
–Charles Johnson
The state we call realization is simply being oneself, not knowing anything or becoming anything.
–Ramana Maharshi
Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end.
–Jiddu Krishnamurti
I sit therefore I am.
–Niraj
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
–Lao Tzu
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.
-Rumi
Even in the midst of disturbance, the stillness of the mind can offer sanctuary.
–Stephen Richards
When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a candle in a windless place.
–Bhagavad Gita
Your goal is not to battle with the mind, but to witness the mind.
–Swami Muktananda
Detach yourself from all that makes your mind restless. Renounce all that disturbs its peace. If you want peace, deserve it. By being a slave to your desires and fears, you disturb peace.
–Nisargadatta Maharaj
Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It’s a way of entering into the quiet that’s already there.
-Deepak Chopra
SEX! Now that I have your attention… Please try to meditate at least 15 minutes, every day. You know it’s good for you.
–Marcelo Alves
Meditation stills the wandering mind and establishes us forever in a state of peace.
–Muktananda
This withdrawal from the day’s turmoil into creative silence is not a luxury, a fad, or a futility. It dissolves mental tensions and heals negative emotions.
–Paul Brunton
The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.
-Caroline Myss
Meditation is like a gym in which you develop the powerful mental muscles of calm and insight.
-Ajahn Brahm
The body benefits from movement, and the mind benefits from stillness.
-Sakyong Mipham
The spirit of meditation is the combating against the weight of one’s feelings.
–Hakuin Ekaku
Put your heart, mind, intellect, and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.
–Swami Sivananda
Take charge of your thoughts. You can do what you will with them.
-Plato
If you have time to breathe you have time to meditate. You breathe when you walk. You breathe when you stand. You breathe when you lie down.
–Ajahn Amaro
A most useful approach to meditation practice is to consider it the most important activity of each day. Schedule it as you would an extremely important appointment, and unfailingly keep your appointment.
–Roy Eugene Davis
Meditation brings wisdom; lack of mediation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.
–Buddha
Inner stillness is the key to outer strength.
–Jared Brock
It’s helpful to remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing with whatever arises, without picking and choosing.
–Pema Chödrön
The difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you do.
Your mind is your instrument. Learn to be its master and not its slave.
–Remez Sasson
Meditation is a way for nourishing and blossoming the divine within you.
–Amit Ray
Meditation allows us to directly participate in our lives instead of living life as an afterthought.
–Stephen Levine
Mindfulness isn’t difficult, we just need to remember to do it.
–Sharon Salzberg
Some people think that meditation takes time away from physical accomplishment. Taken to extremes, of course, that’s true. Most people, however, find that meditation creates more time than it takes.
–Peter McWilliams
Travel light. Live light. Spread the light. Be the light.
-Yogi Bhajan
You should not be carried away by the dictation of the mind, but the mind should be carried by your dictation.
–A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami
Be the master OF mind rather than mastered BY mind.
–Japanese Proverb
Learn to enjoy the way as much as you would enjoy when you reach the destination.
–Sakshi Chetana
If one thinks of oneself as free, one is free, and if one thinks of oneself as bound, one is bound. Here this saying is true, “As one thinks, so one becomes”.
–Ashtavakra Gita
Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
–Marcus Aurelius
Do one thing at a time, and while doing it put your whole soul into it to the exclusion of all else.
–Swami Vivekananda
Train your mind to see the good in everything.
There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: not going all the way, and not starting.
–Buddha
Meditation is to the mind what exercise is to the body – it warms and invigorates.
–John Thornton
Thoughts are like birds in mind; some fly in, some fly out. Some stay at a water hole to drink. Beware of birds that linger.
–Natalie Wright
The mind is responsible for the feelings of pleasure and pain. Control of the mind is the highest Yoga.
–Swami Sivananda
May my heart be kind. May my mind be fierce. May my spirit be brave.
–Kate Forsyth
Need more meditation inspiration? Check out these 20 minute guided meditations.