Top 200 Sharon Salzberg Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “May my practice be dedicated to your well-being.”

— Sharon Salzberg

202. “The overarching practice of letting go is also one of gaining resilience and insight.”

— Sharon Salzberg

203. “Causing harm is never just a one-way street.”

— Sharon Salzberg

204. “What arises in our experience is much less important than how we relate to what arises in our experience.”

— Sharon Salzberg

205. “The difference between a life laced through with frustration and one sustained by happiness depends on whether it is motivated by self-hatred or by real love for oneself.”

— Sharon Salzberg

206. “Training attention through meditation opens our eyes.”

— Sharon Salzberg

207. “Having’ something makes us think we can control it.”

— Sharon Salzberg

208. “No connection is always easy or free of strife, no matter how many minutes a day we meditate. It’s how we relate to conflict, as well as to our differing needs and expectations, that makes our relationships sustainable.”

— Sharon Salzberg

209. “Hatred does not help us alleviate our pain even in the slightest.”

— Sharon Salzberg

210. “When we believe a wounding story, our whole world is diminished.”

— Sharon Salzberg

211. “Even as we recognize our resentment, bitterness, or jealousy, we can also honor our own wish to be happy, to feel free.”

— Sharon Salzberg

212. “When we relate to ourselves with loving kindness, perfectionism naturally drops away.”

— Sharon Salzberg

213. “When we can step back even briefly from our hurt, sorrow, and anger, when we put our faith in the possibility of change, we create the possibility for non-judgmental inquiry that aims for healing rather than victory.”

— Sharon Salzberg

214. “I need to start over. I can’t just stay stuck in this place.” This is a wonderful skill to bring to your life.”

— Sharon Salzberg

215. “When we don’t tell those we love about what’s really going on or listen carefully to what they have to say, we tend to fill in the blanks with stories.”

— Sharon Salzberg

216. “To celebrate someone else’s life, we need to find a way to look at it straight on, not from above with judgment or from below with envy.”

— Sharon Salzberg

217. “What happens in our hearts is our field of freedom. As long as we carry old wounds and anger in our hearts, we continue to suffer. Forgiveness allows us to move on.”

— Sharon Salzberg

218. “When our focus is on seeking, perfecting, or clinging to romance, the charge is often generated by instability, rather than by an authentic connection with another person.”

— Sharon Salzberg

219. “There is no reason for a feeling of separation from anything or anyone, because we have been it all and done it all. How then can we feel self-righteous or removed from anyone or any action? Ther is no spot on this earth where we have not laughed, cried, been born and died. So in some sense, every single place we go is home. Everyone we meet we know. Everything that is done we are capable of.”

— Sharon Salzberg

220. “One of the most powerful aspects of delusion, or ignorance, is the belief that what we do does not really matter.”

— Sharon Salzberg

221. “A key barometer to help us weigh the rightness of our actions is self-respect.”

— Sharon Salzberg

222. “Can you revise your perceptions to see the world in terms of suffering and the end of suffering, instead of good and bad? To see the world in terms of suffering and the end of suffering is Buddha-mind, and will lead us away from righteousness and anger. Get in touch with your own Buddha-mind, and you will uncover a healing force of compassion.”

— Sharon Salzberg

223. “Once we are honest about our feelings, we can invite ourselves to consider alternative modes of viewing our pain and can see that releasing our grip on anger and resentment can actually be an act of self-compassion.”

— Sharon Salzberg

224. “Generosity has such power because it is characterized by the inner quality of letting go or relinquishing.”

— Sharon Salzberg

225. “For any marginalized group to change the story that society tells about them takes courage and perseverance.”

— Sharon Salzberg

226. “Our vision becomes very narrow when we need things to be a certain way and cannot accept things the way they actually are.”

— Sharon Salzberg

227. “When you recognize and reflect on even one good thing about yourself, you are building a bridge to a place of kindness and caring.”

— Sharon Salzberg

228. “The man felt that she had not been a very good mother and was not a good person. At one point, Nisargadatta advised him to love his mother. The man replied, “She wouldn’t let me.” Nisargadatta responded, “She couldn’t stop you.” No external condition can prevent love; no one and no thing can stop it. The awakening of love is not bound up in things being a certain way. Metta, like the true nature of the mind, is not dependent; it is not conditioned.”

— Sharon Salzberg

229. “If we truly loved ourselves, we’d never harm another. That is a truly revolutionary, celebratory mode of self-care.”

— Sharon Salzberg

230. “Loving ourselves calls us to give up the illusion that we can control everything and focuses us on building our inner resource of resilience.”

— Sharon Salzberg

231. “Everyone we interact with has the capacity to surprise us in an infinite number of ways. What can first open us up to each of our innate capacities for love is merely to recognize that.”

— Sharon Salzberg

232. “Ultimately, we forgive others in order to free ourselves.”

— Sharon Salzberg

233. “By accepting and learning to embrace the inevitable sorrows of life, we realize that we can experience a more enduring sense of happiness.”

— Sharon Salzberg

234. “Our senses are often the gateway to our stories.”

— Sharon Salzberg

235. “Only when we start to distinguish reality from fantasy that we can humbly, with eyes wide open, forge loving and sustainable connections with others.”

— Sharon Salzberg

236. “Mindfulness helps us see the addictive aspect of self-criticism – a repetitive cycle of flaying ourselves again and again, feeling the pain anew.”

— Sharon Salzberg

237. “Genuine awe connects us with the world in a new way.”

— Sharon Salzberg

238. “Our can-do culture has made many of us believe that we should always be self-sufficient. Somewhere along the way, we also got the message that asking for help is a sign of weakness. We often forget that we’re interdependent creatures whose very existence depends on the kindness of others, including – with a bow to Tennessee Williams – strangers.”

— Sharon Salzberg

239. “Buddhist teachings discourage us from clinging and grasping to those we hold dear, and from trying to control the people or the relationship. What’s more, we’re encouraged to accept the impermanence of all things: the flower that blooms today will be gone tomorrow, the objects we possess will break or fade or lose their utility, our relationships will change, life will end.”

— Sharon Salzberg

240. “What we learn in meditation, we can apply to all other realms of our lives.”

— Sharon Salzberg

241. “Embracing what is We’re conditioned to believe that painful feelings are “bad” and that pleasurable ones are “good.” It’s often easier – though not healthier – for us to avoid grief and sorrow, while only embracing sensations like happiness, confidence, and love.”

— Sharon Salzberg

242. “When we forgive someone, we don’t pretend that the harm didn’t happen or cause us pain. We see it clearly for what it was, but we also come to see that fixating on the memory of harm generates anger and sadness.”

— Sharon Salzberg

243. “We can always begin again. No matter what happens, no matter how long its been, no matter how far from our aspirations we may have strayed, we can always always begin again.”

— Sharon Salzberg

244. “The skills available to us through mindfulness make it possible to bring love to our connections with others.”

— Sharon Salzberg

245. “The good news is that opportunities for love enter our lives unpredictably, whether or not we’ve perfected self-compassion or befriended our inner critic.”

— Sharon Salzberg

246. “When we pay attention to sensations in our bodies, we can feel that love is the energetic opposite of fear.”

— Sharon Salzberg

247. “It is a great happiness to be able to give.”

— Sharon Salzberg

248. “Why be unhappy about something if you can do something about it? If you can’t do anything about it, why be unhappy about it?”

— Sharon Salzberg