Top 280 Jack Kornfield Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “The trouble is that you think you have time.”

— Jack Kornfield

2. “Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.”

— Jack Kornfield

3. “If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”

— Jack Kornfield

4. “We can always begin again.”

— Jack Kornfield

5. “Be mindful of intention. Intention is the seed that creates our future.”

— Jack Kornfield

6. “To let go does not mean to get rid of. To let go means to let be. When we let be with compassion, things come and go on their own.”

— Jack Kornfield

7. “Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.”

— Jack Kornfield

8. “Much of spiritual life is self-acceptance, maybe all of it.”

— Jack Kornfield

9. “Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything.”

— Jack Kornfield

10. “The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?”

— Jack Kornfield

11. “We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.”

— Jack Kornfield

12. “When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another – and ourselves.”

— Jack Kornfield

13. “Life is so hard, how can we be anything but kind?”

— Jack Kornfield

14. “The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand. They are the moments when we touch one another.”

— Jack Kornfield

15. “Wisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.”

— Jack Kornfield

16. “Compassion is our deepest nature. It arises from our interconnection with all things.”

— Jack Kornfield

17. “May I be filled with loving-kindness. May I be well. May I be peaceful and at ease. May I be happy.”

— Jack Kornfield

18. “Every facet, every department of your mind, is to be programmed by you. And unless you assume your rightful responsibility, and begin to program your own mind, the world will program it for you.”

— Jack Kornfield

19. “The wholeness and freedom we seek is our true nature, who we really are.”

— Jack Kornfield

20. “Equanimity embraces the loved and the unloved, the agreeable and the disagreeable, the pleasure and pain. It eliminates clinging and aversion.”

— Jack Kornfield

21. “Equanimity arises when we accept the way things are.”

— Jack Kornfield

22. “The task is not to perfect yourself, it’s to perfect your love.”

— Jack Kornfield

23. “Love is based on our capacity to trust in a reality beyond fear, to trust a timeless truth bigger than all our difficulties.”

— Jack Kornfield

24. “Attention to the human body brings healing and regeneration. Through awareness of the body we remember who we really are.”

— Jack Kornfield

25. “The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner’s mind.”

— Jack Kornfield

26. “Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.”

— Jack Kornfield

27. “Life without forgiveness is unbearable.”

— Jack Kornfield

28. “Great pain, when it is honored from the heart, opens into great understanding.”

— Jack Kornfield

29. “There is beauty to be found in the changing of the earth’s seasons, and an inner grace in honouring the cycles of life.”

— Jack Kornfield

30. “True love is not for the faint-hearted.”

— Jack Kornfield

31. “The waves do keep coming, so learn to surf.”

— Jack Kornfield

32. “Every individual has a unique contribution.”

— Jack Kornfield

33. “We are awakened to the profound realization that the true path to liberation is to let go of everything.”

— Jack Kornfield

34. “May I be given the appropriate difficulties so that my heart can truly open with compassion. Imagine asking for that.”

— Jack Kornfield

35. “Those who are Awake live in a state of constant amazement...”

— Jack Kornfield

36. “The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.”

— Jack Kornfield

37. “Gratitude is confidence in life itself. In it, we feel how the same force that pushes grass through cracks in the sidewalk invigorates our own life.”

— Jack Kornfield

38. “One of the essential tasks for living a wise life is letting go. Letting go is the path to freedom. It is only by letting go of the hopes, the fears, the pain, the past, the stories that have a hold on us that we can quiet our mind and open our heart.”

— Jack Kornfield

39. “It is not enough to know that love and forgiveness are possible. We have to find ways to bring them to life.”

— Jack Kornfield

40. “Weigh the true advantages of forgiveness and resentment to the heart. Then choose.”

— Jack Kornfield

41. “Most people discover that when hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with their own pain.”

— Jack Kornfield

42. “To live life is to make a succession of errors. Understanding this can bring us great ease and forgiveness for ourselves and others.”

— Jack Kornfield

43. “Do not doubt your own basic goodness. In spite of all confusion and fear, you are born with a heart that knows what is just, loving, and beautiful.”

— Jack Kornfield

44. “In the end, just three things matter: How well we have lived How well we have loved How well we have learned to let go.”

— Jack Kornfield

45. “The quieting of our mind is a political act.”

— Jack Kornfield

46. “At the end of our life our questions are simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well?”

— Jack Kornfield

47. “Tending to ourselves, we tend the world. Tending the world, we tend ourselves.”

— Jack Kornfield

48. “You can pick all the flowers but you can’t stop the spring. – PABLO NERUDA.”

— Jack Kornfield

49. “We as human beings have the amazing capacity to be reborn at breakfast everyday and say, “This is a new day.””

— Jack Kornfield

50. “It is hard to imagine a world without forgiveness. Without forgiveness life would be unbearable. Without forgiveness our lives are chained, forced to carry the sufferings of the past and repeat them with no release.”

— Jack Kornfield