Real Love Quotes Quotes

So often, fear keeps us from being able to say yes to love—perhaps our greatest challenge as human beings.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Learning to treat ourselves lovingly may at first feel like a dangerous experiment.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

The journey to loving ourselves doesn’t mean we like everything.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

~ Sharon Salzberg

When we approach the journey acknowledging what we do not know and what we can’t control, we maintain our energy for the quest.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

~ Sharon Salzberg

Wholehearted acceptance is a basic element of love, starting with love for ourselves, and a gateway to joy. Through the practices of loving kindness and self-compassion, we can learn to love our flawed and imperfect selves. And in those moments of vulnerability, we open our hearts to connect with each other, as well. We are not perfect, but we are enough.

~ Sharon Salzberg

When we contemplate the miracle of embodied life, we begin to partner with our bodies in a kinder way.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Wherever the responsibility lies, shame creates a solid and terrible feeling of unworthiness that resides in our bodies: the storehouse of the memories of our acts, real or imagined, and the secrets we keep about them.

~ Sharon Salzberg

The heart contracts when our bodies are overcome by shame.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Shame weakens us. It can make us frightened to take on something new. We start to withdraw from whatever might give us pleasure, self-esteem, or a sense of our value.

~ Sharon Salzberg

To imagine the way we think is the singular causative agent of all we go through is to practice cruelty toward ourselves.

~ Sharon Salzberg

It’s affirming that we can look at any experience from the fullness of our being and get past the shame we carry.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness allows us to shift the angle on our story and to remember that we have the capacity to learn and change in ways that are productive, not self-defeating.

~ Sharon Salzberg

We can use meditation as a way to experiment with new ways of relating to ourselves, even our uncomfortable thoughts.

~ Sharon Salzberg

if we really look at our actions with eyes of love, we see that our lives can be more straightforward, simpler, less sculpted by regret and fear, more in alignment with our deepest values.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Paying attention to the ethical implications of our choices has never been more pressing—or more complicated—than it is today.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Causing harm is never just a one-way street.

~ Sharon Salzberg

If we harm someone else, we’re inevitably also hurting ourselves. Some quality of sensitivity and awareness has to shut down for us to be able to objectify someone else, to deny them as a living, feeling being—someone who wants to be happy, just as we do.

~ Sharon Salzberg

When we do our best to treat others with kindness, it’s often a struggle to determine which actions best express our love and care for ourselves.

~ Sharon Salzberg

When we feel conflicted about a particular decision or action, our bodies often hold the answer—if we take the time to stop and tune in.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness is so much wiser and more robust than our inner critic.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Just as a prism refracts light differently when you change its angle, each experience of love illuminates love in new ways, drawing from an infinite palette of patterns and hues.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Forgiveness is a process, an admittedly difficult one that often can feel like a rigorous spiritual practice.

~ Sharon Salzberg

We cannot instantaneously force ourselves to forgive—and forgiveness happens at a different pace for everyone and is dependent on the particulars of any given situation.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Telling the story, acknowledging what has happened and how you feel, is often a necessary part of forgiveness.

~ Sharon Salzberg

The first step toward feeling compassion for others is to set the intention to try it out.

~ Sharon Salzberg

The combination of realizing our distinctiveness along with our unity is seeing interdependence.

~ Sharon Salzberg

If we turn away from our own pain, we may find ourselves projecting this aversion onto others, seeing them as somehow inadequate for being in a troubled situation.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

~ Sharon Salzberg

deep inside the eyes of a true lover lies the heart of a true lover.

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Real Love for ourselves by definition includes every aspect of our lives—the good, the bad, the difficult, the challenging past, the uncertain future, as well as all the shameful, upsetting experiences and encounters we’d just as soon forget.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Many strong emotions are actually intricate tapestries woven of various strands.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Even as we live with the knowledge that each day might be our last, we don’t want to believe it.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Without commitment and real selflessness, real love shall always be like a sea without fish; a forest without the sweet harmonious chorus of the birds and a stomach without food

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah