“You need to train yourself to pay less attention to the words that people say and greater attention to their actions. People will say all kinds of things about their motives and intentions; they are used to dressing things up with words. Their actions, however, say much more about what is going on underneath the surface.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 161)
“The problem, Mitch, is that we don’t believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own. But, believe me, when you are dying, you see it is true. We all have the same beginning—birth—and we all have the same end—death. So how different can we be? Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you.”
Morrie Schwartz, via Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 157)
“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.”
Morrie Schwartz, via Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 156)
“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)
“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)
“Try to understand and remember that a person always tries to do what is best for himself. And if he is right when he does the best thing for himself, it is good; but if he is mistaken, it is bad, because suffering will follow after such mistakes. If you remember this, then you will never be upset by anybody, you will never reproach anybody, and you will never be an enemy to anybody.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 130)
“If there is animosity between two people, both are to blame. Any number you multiply by zero, however big, will equal zero. If there is animosity, then, it is the animosity of two people toward each other, and it exists in both of them.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 130)
“Mitch, it is impossible for the old not to envy the young. But the issue is to accept who you are and revel in that. This is your time to be in your thirties. I had my time to be in my thirties, and now is my time to be seventy-eight. 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.”
Morrie Schwartz, via Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 120)
“Listen. You should know something. All younger people should know something. If you’re always battling against getting older, you’re always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyhow.”
Morrie Schwartz, via Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 118)
“If aging were so valuable, why do people always say, ‘Oh, if I were young again.’ You never hear people say, ‘I wish I were sixty-five.’ [Morrie] smiled. ‘You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven’t found meaning. Because if you’ve found meaning in your life, you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can’t wait until sixty-five.”
Mitch Albom, via Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 118)
“Timidity is dangerous. Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 147)