Top 200 Sharon Salzberg Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “As an ability, love is always there as a potential, ready to flourish and help our lives flourish. As we go up and down in life, as we acquire or lose, as we are showered with praise or unfairly blamed, always within there is the ability of love, recognized or not, given life or not.”

— Sharon Salzberg

52. “We learn and grow and are transformed not so much by what we do but by why and how we do it.”

— Sharon Salzberg

53. “By prizing heartfulness above faultlessness, we may reap more from our effort because we’re more likely to be changed by it.”

— Sharon Salzberg

54. “With mindfulness, loving kindness, and self-compassion, we can begin to let go of our expectations about how life and those we love should be.”

— Sharon Salzberg

55. “Our practice rather than being about killing the ego is about simply discovering our true nature.”

— Sharon Salzberg

56. “You could search the whole world over and never find anyone as deserving of your love as yourself.”

— Sharon Salzberg

57. “I will love myself as long as I never make a mistake.”

— Sharon Salzberg

58. “Metta is the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves, as well as all parts of the world. Practicing metta illuminates our inner integrity because it relieves us of the need to deny different aspects of ourselves.”

— Sharon Salzberg

59. “I’ve been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened,” Mark Twain once said.”

— Sharon Salzberg

60. “Let the power of intention lead the way.”

— Sharon Salzberg

61. “To offer our hearts in faith means recognizing that our hearts are worth something, that we ourselves, in our deepest and truest nature, are of value.”

— Sharon Salzberg

62. “By engaging in a delusive quest for happiness, we bring only suffering upon ourselves. In our frantic search for something to quench our thirst, we overlook the water all around us and drive ourselves into exile from our own lives.”

— Sharon Salzberg

63. “The movement of the heart as we practice generosity in the outer world mirrors the movement of the heart when we let go of conditioned views about ourselves on our inner journey. Letting go creates a joyful sense of space in our minds.”

— Sharon Salzberg

64. “The key in letting go is practice. Each time we let go, we disentangle ourselves from our expectations and begin to experience things as they are.”

— Sharon Salzberg

65. “Meditation is a microcosm, a model, a mirror. The skills we practice when we sit are transferable to the rest of our lives.”

— Sharon Salzberg

66. “All beings want to be happy, yet so very few know how. It is out of ignorance that any of us cause suffering, for ourselves or for others.”

— Sharon Salzberg

67. “We apply our effort to be mindful, to be aware in this very moment, right here and now, and we bring a very wholehearted effort to it. This brings concentration. It is this power of concentration that we use to cut through the world of surface appearances to get to a much deeper reality.”

— Sharon Salzberg

68. “Training our mind through meditation does not mean forcibly subjugating it or beating it into shape.”

— Sharon Salzberg

69. “When we direct a lot of hostile energy toward the inner critic, we enter into a losing battle.”

— Sharon Salzberg

70. “The meditation traditions I started and have continued practicing have all emphasized inclusivity: anyone can do this who is interested.”

— Sharon Salzberg

71. “The causes of familial discord and distance are countless, but the results are often the same: secrecy, blame, sadness, hurt, confusion, and feelings of loss and grief.”

— Sharon Salzberg

72. “Loving kindness is the practice of offering to oneself and others wishes to be happy, peaceful, healthy, strong.”

— Sharon Salzberg

73. “I see real love as the most fundamental of our innate capacities, never destroyed no matter what we might have gone through or might yet go through.”

— Sharon Salzberg

74. “By experimenting with sympathetic joy, we break from the constricted world of individual struggle and see that joy exists in more places than we have yet imagined.”

— Sharon Salzberg

75. “Whether we fear the existence of boundaries with others or crave more of them, there’s no denying that individuation and separation are inevitable parts of loving relationships that become the site of tension.”

— Sharon Salzberg

76. “We spend our lives searching for something we think we don’t have, something that will make us happy. But the key to our deepest happiness lies in changing our vision of where to seek it.”

— Sharon Salzberg

77. “Compassion allows us to bear witness to suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal.”

— Sharon Salzberg

78. “Things don’t just happen in this world of arising and passing away. We don’t live in some kind of crazy, accidental universe. Things happen according to certain laws, laws of nature. Laws such as the law of karma, which teaches us that as a certain seed gets planted, so will that fruit be.”

— Sharon Salzberg

79. “We often get caught up in our own reactions and forget the vulnerability of the person in front of us.”

— Sharon Salzberg

80. “We need the compassion and the courage to change the conditions that support our suffering. Those conditions are things like ignorance, bitterness, negligence, clinging, and holding on.”

— Sharon Salzberg

81. “You should never use the word Karma when talking about someone else, it’s only a concept you should apply to yourself as a matter of investigation.”

— Sharon Salzberg

82. “An ordinary favor we do for someone or any compassionate reaching out may seem to be going nowhere at first, but may be planting a seed we can’t see right now. Sometimes we need to just do the best we can and then trust in an unfolding we can’t design or ordain.”

— Sharon Salzberg

83. “The art of concentration is a continual letting go. We let go of what is inessential or distracting. We let go of a thought or a feeling, not because we are afraid of it or because we can’t bear to acknowledge it as a part of our experience; but, because it is UNNECESSARY.”

— Sharon Salzberg

84. “Pure generosity emerges when we give without the need for our offering to be received in a certain way. That’s why the best kind of generosity comes from inner abundance, rather than from feeling deficient and hollow, starved for validation.”

— Sharon Salzberg

85. “Rapture is the gateway to nirvana.”

— Sharon Salzberg

86. “In our own lives and in our communities, we need to find a way to include others rather than exclude them. We need to find a way to allow our pain and suffering, individually and collectively.”

— Sharon Salzberg

87. “Mindfulness, also called wise attention, helps us see what we’re adding to our experiences, not only during meditation sessions but also elsewhere.”

— Sharon Salzberg

88. “Seeking is endless. It never comes to a state of rest; it never ceases.”

— Sharon Salzberg

89. “Meditation is a tool for helping us accept the profound fact that everything changes all the time.”

— Sharon Salzberg

90. “Its never too late to take a moment to look.”

— Sharon Salzberg

91. “We long for permanence but everything in the known universe is transient. That’s a fact but one we fight.”

— Sharon Salzberg

92. “Faith is not a commodity that you either have or don’t have enough of, or the right kind of. It’s an ongoing process. The opposite of faith is despair.”

— Sharon Salzberg

93. “The more we practice sympathetic joy, the more we come to realize that the happiness we share with others is inseparable from our own happiness.”

— Sharon Salzberg

94. “Vulnerability in the face of constant change is what we share, whatever our present condition.”

— Sharon Salzberg

95. “Often in close relationships, the subject being discussed is not the subject at all.”

— Sharon Salzberg

96. “There is no ‘thing’ to let go of, but a concept, an idea of an ego that burdens us. As soon as we posit a ‘thing’ to let go of, we’re in trouble. We need to change our view of reality, not attack a nonexistent entity.”

— Sharon Salzberg

97. “Meditation teaches us to focus and to pay clear attention to our experiences and responses as they arise, and to observe them without judging them.”

— Sharon Salzberg

98. “What you learn about pain in formal meditation can help you relate to it in your daily life.”

— Sharon Salzberg

99. “All of our actions can signify self-love or self-sabotage.”

— Sharon Salzberg

100. “Letting go is an inside job, something only we can do for ourselves.”

— Sharon Salzberg