“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, via Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 136)
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“Do not think that courage lies only in boldness and power. The highest courage is the courage to be higher than your rage and to love a person who has offended you.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 134)
“Part of the problem, Mitch, is that everyone is in such a hurry. People haven’t found meaning in their lives, so they’re running all the time looking for it. They think the next car, the next house, the next job. Then they find those things are empty, too, and they keep running.”
Morrie Schwartz, via Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 136)
“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.”
Morrie Schwartz, via Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 128)
“If you’re trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down at 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.”
Morrie Schwartz, via Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 127)
“Illnesses almost always destroy one’s physical power, and they release the power of one’s soul. For a person who concentrates his consciousness in the spiritual domain, illnesses do not diminish his goodness, but on the contrary, they increase it.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 132)
“You know what really gives you satisfaction? Offering others what you have to give. I don’t mean money, Mitch. I mean your time. Your concern. Your storytelling. It’s not so hard.”
Morrie Schwartz, via Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 126)
“You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship. 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.”
Morrie Schwartz, via Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 125)
“Work is necessary. If you want a good disposition of your spirit, work until you become tired. But not too much. Not until you become exhausted. A good spiritual disposition can be destroyed by excessive work as well as by idleness.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 131)
“We’ve got a form of brainwashing going on in our country. Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that’s what we do in this country. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it—and have it repeated to us—over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what’s really important anymore.”
Morrie Schwartz, via Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 124)