Mitch Albom
Desire sets our compass, but real life steers our course.Collection: Life
Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Past
You can find something truly important in an ordinary minute.Collection: Important
Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. an alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.Collection: Running
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.Collection: Pain
Fear is how you lose your life...a little bit at a time...What we give to fear, we take away from...faith.Collection: Giving
But there's a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begin.Collection: Mother
You can feel the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain-- no matter how smart or accomplished--they cry, they yearn, they hurt. But instead of looking down on things, they look up, which is where I should have been looking, too. Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things: comfort, love and a peaceful heart.Collection: Faith
Anger is a poison. It eats us inside. We think when we hate someone we hurt them, but hatred is a curved blade, and the harm we do to others we also do to ourselves.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Thinking
Love is the only rational act.Collection: Happiness
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.Collection: Way
We all know how to be a child. It's inside all of us. For me, it's just remembering how to enjoy it.Collection: Children
I love you every day, MomCollection: Mom
Had he known his death was imminent, he might have gone somewhere else. Instead, he did what we all do. He went about his dull routine as if all the days in the world were still to come. ~pg 4Collection: Somewhere Else
Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down.Collection: Confused
What about a man who sits down to wonder Why life has cheated him? Thinks about his situation Hangs his head and cries Will we pretend, his problems don't exist? He's reaching out for help-will we selfishly resist? What about your brother? He's crying What about your brother? He's dying What about your brother?Collection: Brother
Tears are okay [Morrie Schwartz]Collection: Tears
How do people choose their final words? Do they realize their gravity? Are they fated to be wise?Collection: Wise
He cried that night for all that he had lost, but he would say it taught him a valuable lesson: that holding on to things "will only break your heart.Collection: Heart
Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all.Collection: Lost Love
Tension of opposites.Collection: Opposites
Kids chase the love that eludes them.Collection: Kids
So, have we solved the secret of happiness? "I believe so," he said Are you going to tell me? "Yes.Ready?" Ready. "Be satisfied." That's it? "Be greatful." That's it? "For what you have.For the love you receive.And for what God has given you." That's it? He looked me in the eye.Then he sighed deeply. "That's it.Collection: Believe
Now you know how badly someone wanted you, Charley. Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted.Collection: Children
He never spoke of that night again, not to your mother, not to anyone else. He was ashamed for her, for Mickey, for himself. In the hospital, he stopped speaking altogether. Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge. His thoughts still haunted him.' ~pg 139Collection: Mother
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.Collection: Military
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).Collection: Children
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.Collection: Moon
I traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck, and I never even realized I was doing it.Collection: Dream
Being here in Detroit, our public education in this city is - it's shocking. And the oversight of it and the oversight of the teachers and the funding is nonexistent, and the priority that's put on it is so low.Collection: Teacher
You're not going to fix things by helping 65-year-olds or 75-year-olds for any long run.Collection: Running
No, Edward. You are here so I can teach you something. All the people you meet here have one thing to teach you.Collection: People
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.Collection: Responsibility
What she mostly wanted, he learned, was the same thing many people want--someone to notice she was there.Collection: People
when your time came, it came, and that was that. You might say something smart on your way out, but you might just as easily say something stupid.Collection: Smart
my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways" from the book of IsaiahCollection: Bible
What is it about childhood that never lets you go, even when you're so wrecked it's hard to believe you ever were a child?Collection: Children
You count the hours you could have spent with your mother. It's a lifetime in itself.Collection: Mom
He was near tears, 'Who do I blame?' he kept asking me. 'There is no God.I can only blame myself.'" The Reb's face tightened, as if in pain. "That," he said, softly, "is a terrible self-indictment." Worse than an unanswered prayer? "Oh yes. It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody's out there.Collection: Prayer
No matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don't see what we could be.Collection: Where You Live
She was like a wound beneath an old bandage, and he had grown more used to the bandage.Collection: Used
Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? He could be research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me.Collection: Watches
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.Collection: Children
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".Collection: Hurt
I made the wrong choice ," I whispered. My mother shook her head. "A child should never have to choose.Collection: Mother
Small towns are like metronomes; with the slightest flick, the beat changes.Collection: Towns
What if I lose you?" "You can't lose your mother, Charley.Collection: Mother