Dhammapada
An early Buddhist anthology of 423 verses, one of the most quoted wisdom collections in the world.
The Dhammapada is a collection of 423 short verses in Pali, arranged in 26 chapters by theme — mind, flowers, the fool, the sage, anger, happiness. It sits in the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Pali Canon and is traditionally presented as sayings of the Buddha, compiled over time rather than composed at a single sitting.
Its structure explains its quotability. Each verse is a complete, self-contained statement, usually built on a concrete image or a sharp opposition, and the chapters function as a topical index. Read as a quotation source, it behaves like a florilegium organised centuries before that word existed.
Verifying Dhammapada quotations requires care with translations. Popular English renderings vary widely: Max Müller's 1881 version, Narada Thera's, Thanissaro Bhikkhu's, and numerous loose modern paraphrases circulate as though interchangeable. Many well-known 'Buddha quotes' online — including 'holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal' — are not in the Pali text at all.
Best practice is to cite verse number as well as translator, since chapter-and-verse numbering is stable across editions even when the English is not.
“Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world; by non-hatred alone is hatred appeased.”
Keep reading the glossary
A terse aphoristic formula from Indian religious and technical literature, designed to be memorised.
Verse composed largely of aphoristic sayings, usually didactic in intent.
A 'bouquet' of extracts — a curated anthology of passages from other authors, gathered by theme.
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers — collected wisdom of the early Christian monastic elders.