Sharon Salzberg Quotes

I love human beings. I believe that there is so much to learn from every person you meet, including a child.

The only enlightened masters I know are the people that I see every day and the people that I've seen through my life who have had the understanding, at some level, that we're here to express love.

You meet people who are in pain in life and love and you forgive them for behaving the way they do.

I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen by them, heard by them, to be understood and touched by them.

Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.

The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.

We may thank God that we can feel pain and know sadness, for these are the human sentiments that constitute our glory as well as our grief.

Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life's search for love and wisdom.

The moment something happens to one you love, it's twenty times more intense. You experience pain and enlightenment on a much vaster scale.

When I hear other people's stories, I like to believe that they contribute to my 'Encyclopedia of Human Experience.' The stories I hear help me expand my definition of what love is, what pain feels like, what sacrifice means, what laughter can do.

Nothing is old, nothing is new, save the light of grace underneath which beats a human heart. The way of feeling, of understanding, of loving; the way of seeing the country, the faces that your father saw, that your mother knew. The rest is chimerical.

I think half or almost all of the pain in the world … is people not feeling seen. It’s like Mr. Rogers, my hero, says: “Love is the root of everything … love or the lack of it.”

Grace is what matters in anything - especially life, especially growth, tragedy, pain, love, death. That's a quality that I admire very greatly. It keeps you from reaching out for the gun too quickly. It keeps you from destroying things too foolishly. It sort of keeps you alive.

Every now and then, I am reminded it's not always about politics. It's about people.

I know about forgiving people and loving them anyway, even after they hurt you.

When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone’s pain, it become compassion.

The more deeply you understand other people, the more you will appreciate them, the more reverent you will feel about them. To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality

Sometimes I wonder if we don't see Christ's love as much in the people he tolerated as in the pain he endured.

You'll never get to a person's soul until you understand their hurts.

In a contagious world,we learn to keep our distance. If we get too close to those who are suffering, we might get infected by their pain. It may not be convenient or comfortable. But only when you get close enough to catch their hurt will they be close enough to catch your love.

So, when you have that experienced knowledge you lose the ability to hurt people and you also lose the ability to be hurt by people. That's love.

I believe that people want the scent of love, more than anything else. And I don't mean sentimentality, I don't mean mush. I mean that idea, that human beings are more alike than we are different. And that means that I can love you. I don't mean support you in bad things you do, that I can understand because you're a human being.

I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.

Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little?