Mitch Albom - Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)

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So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

Mitch Albom
Have you ever really had a teacher? One who saw you as a raw but precious thing, a jewel that, with wisdom, could be polished to a proud shine?

Mitch Albom
Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too - even when you're in the dark. Even when you're falling.

Mitch Albom
I believe he died this way on purpose. I believe he wanted no chilling moments, no one to witness his last breath and be haunted by it, the way he had been haunted by his mother's death-notice telegram or by his father's corpse in the city morgue.

Mitch Albom
The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.

Mitch Albom
It's not contagious, you know. Death is as natural as life. It's part of the deal we made.

Mitch Albom
Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do. Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it. Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others. Don't assume that it's too late to get involved.

Mitch Albom
No matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don't see what we could be.

Mitch Albom
This is part of what a family is about, not just love. It's knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.

Mitch Albom
Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.

Mitch Albom
Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overwhelmed with what comes back.

Mitch Albom
Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you.

Mitch Albom
This is how you start to get respect, by offering something that you have.

Mitch Albom
Detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That's how you are able to leave it.

Mitch Albom
Shouldn't the world stop? Don't they know what has happened to me?

Mitch Albom
To know you're going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That's better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you're living.

Mitch Albom
The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn't the family. If you don't have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don't have much at all. Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, 'Love each other or perish'.

Mitch Albom
Most of us all walk around as if we're sleepwalking. We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.

Mitch Albom
There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don't respect the other person, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't know how to compromise, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can't talk openly about what goes on between you, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don't have a common set of values in life, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.' - Morrie Schwartz

Mitch Albom
The truth is, when our mothers held us, rocked us, stroked our heads -none of us ever got enough of that. We all yearn in some way to return to those days when we were completely taken care of - unconditional love, unconditional attention. Most of us didn't get enough.

Mitch Albom
There is no experience like having children.' That's all. There is no substitute for it. You cannot do it with a friend. You cannot do it with a lover. If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.

Mitch Albom
When you learn how to die, you learn how to live.

Mitch Albom
You have to find what's good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And, age is not a competitive issue.

Mitch Albom
Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do somehing else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.

Mitch Albom
Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won't hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, All right, it's just fear, I don't have to let it control me. I see it for what it is".

Mitch Albom
There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things" -he sighed- "these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do? Morrie Schwartz

Mitch Albom
What she mostly wanted, he learned, was the same thing many people want—someone to notice she was there.

Mitch Albom
When he smiles it's as if you'd just told him the first joke on earth.

Mitch Albom
In business people negotiate to win. They negotiate to get what they want. Love is different. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else's situation as you are about your own.

Mitch Albom
I give myself a good cry if I need it, but then I concentrate on all good things still in my life.

Mitch Albom