Robert Fulghum Quotes

84 Sourced Quotes

I did not set out to be a writer. It's something that came to me after I was 50 years of age. And I already had the life that I wanted and the wife I wanted and at that age I was fairly clear about what was important. The success that my writing is enjoying is like finding out your rich uncle has left you a train full of hammers. I mean, how many hammers can you use? It's chocolate syrup. It's an extra. So I take it very lightly. And if I were to fall off the charts tomorrow, I've already had more fame than I deserve and more money than I've ever had in my life. The thought that I could finally pay off my Visa bill! That's rich.

Robert Fulghum
For all my good intentions, there are days when things go wrong or I fall into old habits. When things are not going well, when I'm grumpy or mad, I'll realize that I've not been paying attention to my soul and I've not been following my best routine.

Robert Fulghum
The Indian danced on alone. The crowd clapped up the beat. The Indian danced with a chair. The crowd went crazy. The band faded. The crowd cheered. The Indian held up his hands for silence as if to make a speech. Looking at the band and then the crowd, the Indian said, "Well, what're you waiting for? Let's DANCE.

Robert Fulghum
The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be.

Robert Fulghum
If I don't have time to live my life well the first time, when am I going to find the time to go back and live it over?

Robert Fulghum
Public lives are lived out on the job and in the marketplace, where certain rules, conventions, laws, and social customs keep most of us in line. Private lives are lived out in the presence of family, friends, and neighbors who must be considered and respected even though the rules and proscriptions are looser than what's allowed in public. But in our secret lives, inside our own heads, almost anything goes.

Robert Fulghum
I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have - I can reflect light into the dark places of this world - into the black places in the hearts of men - and change somethings in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life.

Robert Fulghum
Wherever and however any one of us may be conceived, it is the same. We come into being in the arms of God.

Robert Fulghum
I don't think the thing is to be well known, but being worth knowing.

Robert Fulghum
There is nothing in your budget for joy. No books, no flowers, no music, not even a cold beer. And there is nothing in your budget to give away to someone else. We don't help people who don't have better values than you do.

Robert Fulghum
My convictions have validity for me because I have experimented with the compounds of ideas of others in the laboratory of my mind. And I've tested the results in the living out of my life. At twenty-one, I had drawn an abstract map based on the evidence of others. At sixty, I have accumulated a practical guide grounded in my own experience. At twenty-one, I could discuss transportation theory with authority. At sixty, I know which bus to catch to go where, what the fare is, and how to get back home again. It is not my bus, but I know how to use it.

Robert Fulghum
It's hard to explain the cost and consequences of environmental pollution and destruction to a six year old. But we are paying a desperate price even now because adults did not heed the instructions of kindergarten: Clean up your own mess; put things back where you found them; don't take what's not yours.

Robert Fulghum
From the first day we are told in words we can handle what has come to be prized as the foundation of community and culture. Though the teacher may call these first lessons simple rules, they are in fact the distillation of all the hard-won, field-tested working standards of the human enterprise.

Robert Fulghum
Making a living and having a life are not the same thing. Making a living and making a life that's worthwhile are not the same thing. Living the good life and living a good life are not the same thing. A job title doesn't even come close to answering the question "What do you do?"

Robert Fulghum
The kindergarten essay got into that underground press we all belong to where something just sort of has a life of its own and moves around and it gets on refrigerators and in the work place and people copy it... I was a minister in the Unitarian church at the time and teaching and I was ready to stop that and do the next phase of my life. So I had quit both those jobs and I was all set up with my studio in Seattle when this other horse came riding by … I'm not a great writer and I'll never get the Nobel Prize or a Pulitzer Prize but I've won the refrigerator door award. And you don't see Faulkner on people's refrigerator.

Robert Fulghum
Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found.

Robert Fulghum
Arguing whether or not a God exists is like fleas arguing whether or not the dog exists. Arguing over the correct name for God is like fleas arguing over the name of the dog. And arguing over whose notion of God is correct is like fleas arguing over who owns the dog.

Robert Fulghum
One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference.

Robert Fulghum
I don't do art to address other people but to address myself. I've never done art with a thought of being a professional artist who makes a living by selling his art. I've never had a commercial show in a gallery. I suppose I'm like those who write poetry or songs without seeking publication. I make art in and for the experience itself — to satisfy a need to express myself in a creative, colorful, non-verbal way.

Robert Fulghum
You will continue to read stories of crookedness and corruption - of policemen who lie and steal, doctors who reap where they do not sew, politicians on the take. Don't be misled. They are news because they are the exceptions.

Robert Fulghum
Peace is not something you wish for; it's something you make, something you do, something you are, something you give away.

Robert Fulghum
A giraffe has a black tongue twenty-seven inches long and no vocal cords. A giraffe has nothing to say. He just goes on giraffing.

Robert Fulghum
If you tell people you talk to God, they'll think you're religious, but if you say God talks to you, it's ten to one they'll think you're crazy.

Robert Fulghum
If you do not join the dancing you will feel foolish. So why not dance? And i will tell you a secret: If you do not join the dance, we will know you are a fool. But if you dance, we will think well of you for trying. if you dance badly to begin and we laugh, what is the sin in that? We will begin there.

Robert Fulghum