Mitch Albom - Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)

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I asked myself, 'Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live?' I decided I am going to live - or at least try to live - the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure.

Mitch Albom
Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don't see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you're surrounded by people who say 'I want mine now,' you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it.

Mitch Albom
What is it about silence that makes people uneasy?

Mitch Albom
Don't hang on too long, but don't let go too soon.

Mitch Albom
I don't mean you disregard every rule of your community. I don't go around naked, for example. I don't run through red lights. The little things, I can obey. But the big things- how we think, what we value- those you must choose yourself. You can't let anyone-or any society- determine those for you. ' -Morrie Schwartz

Mitch Albom
How could he find perfection in such an average day? Then I realized this was the whole point.

Mitch Albom
If you hold back on the emotions—if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them—you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your heard even, you experience them fully and completely.

Mitch Albom
It's like going back to being a child again. Someone to bathe you. Someone to lift you. Someone to wipe you. We all know how to be a child. It's inside all of us. For me, It's just remembering how to enjoy it.

Mitch Albom
If you're trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down on you anyhow. And if you're trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.

Mitch Albom
Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?

Mitch Albom
I traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck, and I never even realized I was doing it.

Mitch Albom
If you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy, because it's going to happen anyhow.

Mitch Albom
Well, for one thing, the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own. Most people can't do it.

Mitch Albom
My father moved through theys of we, singing each new leaf out of each tree, (and every child was sure that spring danced when she heard my father sing)...

Mitch Albom
Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, 'Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person i want to be? Is today the day I die?

Mitch Albom
Death: the only true emotion felt in an apathetic world

Mitch Albom
We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don't satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.

Mitch Albom
Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it.

Mitch Albom
Sometimes, they say, the moon is so busy with the new souls of the world that it disappears from the sky. That is why we have moonless nights. But in the end, the moon always returns, as do we all.

Mitch Albom
I thought about all the people I knew who spent many of their waking hours feeling sorry for themselves. How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful minutes, then on with the day.

Mitch Albom
In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive, right? And at the end of life, when you get like me, you need others to survive, right?' His voice dropped to a whisper. 'But here's the secret: in between, we need others as well.

Mitch Albom
Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. I can tell you, as I'm sitting here dying, when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you're looking for, no matter how much of them you have."

Mitch Albom
You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship

Mitch Albom
If we can remember the feeling of love we once had, we can die without ever going away.

Mitch Albom
As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed as ignorant as you were at twenty-two, you'd always be twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.

Mitch Albom
As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away.

Mitch Albom
We're so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks—we're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don't get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?

Mitch Albom
Everyone knows they re going to die,' he said again, 'but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.

Mitch Albom
You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found meaning. Because if you've find meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward.

Mitch Albom
Be compassionate," Morrie whispered. And take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much better a place." He took a breath, then added his mantra: "Love each other or die.

Mitch Albom