Mitch Albom Quotes - Page 4

Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives
Mitch Albom
Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others.
Mitch Albom
When a baby comes into the world, its hands are clenched, right? Like this?" He made a fist. "Why? Because a baby, not knowing any better, wants to grab everything, to say, 'The whole world is mine.' "But when an old person dies, how does he do so? With his hands open. Why? Because he has learned his lesson." What lesson? I asked. He stretched open his empty fingers. "We can take nothing with us.
Mitch Albom
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 grateful." 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.
Mitch Albom
Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too---even when you're in the dark. Even when you're falling.
Mitch Albom
Because, from the beginning , God said, 'I'm gonna put this world into your hands. If I run everything, then that's not you.' So we were created with a piece of divinity inside us, but with this thing called free will, and I think God watches us everyday, lovingly, praying we will make the right choices.
Mitch Albom
Because, from the beginning, God said, 'I'm gonna put this world into your hands. If I run everything, then that's not you.' So we were created with a piece of divinity inside us, but with this thing called free will, and I think God watches us everyday, lovingly, praying we will make the right choices.
Mitch Albom
Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?"-Morrie
Mitch Albom
My friedns, if we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere, our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of 'I could have, I should have.' We can sleep in a storm. "And when it's time, our good-byes will be complete.
Mitch Albom
My friends, if we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere, our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of 'I could have, I should have.' We can sleep in a storm. "And when it's time, our good-byes will be complete.
Mitch Albom
He loved to smile. He avoided anger. He was never haunted by "Why am I here?" He knew why he was here, he said: to give to others, to celebrate God, and to enjoy and honour the world he was put in. His morning prayers began with "Thank you, Lord, for returning my soul to me." When you start that way, the rest of the day is a bonus.
Mitch Albom
There is no formula to relationships. They have to be negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like.
Mitch Albom
Have you found someone to share your heart with? Are you giving to your community? Are you at peace with yourself? Are you trying to be as human as you can be?
Mitch Albom
I took my orders, too. But if i couldn't keep you alive, I thought I could at least keep you together. In the middle of a big war, you go looking for a small idea to believe in. When you find one, you hold it the way a soldier holds his crucifix when he's praying in a foxhole.
Mitch Albom
People often belittle the place where they were born but heaven can be found in the most unlikely places.
Mitch Albom
What do people fear most about death? I asked the reb."Fear?" he thought for a moment. 'Well, for one thing, what happens next? Where do we go? Is it what we imagined?"That's big."Yes. But there's something else."What else?He leaned forward."Being forgotten," he whispered.
Mitch Albom
Love- the infatuation kind- 'he's so handsome, she's so beautiful'- that can shrivel. As soon as something goes wrong, that kind of love can fly out the window.
Mitch Albom
Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.
Mitch Albom
A funeral is no place for secrets.
Mitch Albom
Your father was no longer a young man. he was already in his fifties.'Fifty-six,' Eddie said blankly.Fifty-six,' the old woman repeated. 'His body had been weakened, the ocean had left him vulnerable, pneumonia took hold of him, and in time, he died.'Because of Mickey?' Eddie said.Because of loyalty,' she said.People don’t die because of loyalty.'They don’t?' she smiled. 'Religion? government? Are we not loyal to such things, sometimes to the death?'Eddie shrugged.Better,' she said, 'To be loyal to one another.
Mitch Albom
Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another.
Mitch Albom
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.
Mitch Albom
It’s not contagious, you know. Death is as natural as life. It’s part of the deal we made.
Mitch Albom
I hope you never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that pounds away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain. And in so doing, they split you apart.
Mitch Albom
But she wasn’t around, and that’s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone.
Mitch Albom
Do you prefer Mitch? Or is Mitchell better?'.. .. Mitch, I say. Mitch is what my friends called me. 'Well, Mitch it is then,' Morrie says, as if closing a deal. 'And, Mitch?' Yes? 'I hope one day you will think of me as your friend.
Mitch Albom
What is false about hope?
Mitch Albom
Much of what we called "depression" was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures we weren't willing to work for.
Mitch Albom
when he smiles it's as if you'd just told him the first joke on earth.
Mitch Albom
You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship
Mitch Albom
Doubt is how you find God
Mitch Albom
Personally, I always wondered about authors and celebrities who loudly declared there was no God. It was usually when they were healthy and popular and being listened to by crowds. What happens, I wondered, in the quiet moments before death? By then, they have lost the stage, the world has moved on. If suddenly, in their last gasping moments, through fear, a vision, a late enlightenment, they change their minds about God, who would know?
Mitch Albom
Man invents nothing God did not create first.
Mitch Albom
It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody’s out there.
Mitch Albom
Look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that I must differ. No matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something they can’t explain, something that created it all at the end of the search.“And no matter how far they try to go the other way – to extend life, play around with the genes, clone this, clone that, live to one hundred and fifty – at some point, life is over. And then what happens? When the life comes to an end?”I shrugged.“You see?”He leaned back. He smiled.“When you come to the end, that’s where God begins.
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
This is part of what a family is about, not just love, but letting others know there’s someone who is watching out for them. It’s what I missed so much when my mother died—what I call your ‘spiritual security’—knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame.
Mitch Albom
The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family. If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all. Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish’.
Mitch Albom
This is how you start to get respect, by offering something that you have.
Mitch Albom
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.
Mitch Albom
Take any emotion—love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. 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 head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment’.
Mitch Albom
But I do know we’re deficient in some way. 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
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
Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.
Mitch Albom
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.
Mitch Albom
Be compassionate ... and take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be a better place.
Mitch Albom
We all have same beginning (BIRTH), and we will have same ending (DEATH). So how different can we be?
Mitch Albom
Fear is how you lose your life...a little bit at a time...What we give to fear, we take away from...faith.
Mitch Albom
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.
Mitch Albom
If we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love, and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere, our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of ‘I could have, I should have’. We can sleep in a storm. And when its time, our goodbyes will be complete.
Mitch Albom
So, have we solved the secret of happiness?"I believe so," he saidAre 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.
Mitch Albom
There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things" -he sighed- "these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do? Morrie Schwartz
Mitch Albom
It’s funny. I met a man once who did a lot of mountain climbing. I asked him which was harder, ascending or descending? He said without a doubt descending, because ascending you were so focused on reaching the top, you avoided mistakes.The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature,” he said. “You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.
Mitch Albom
I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on the good things still in my life. I don't allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each every morning, a few tears, and that's all.
Mitch Albom
Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others.
Mitch Albom
Ends are for yesterday, not tomorrows.
Mitch Albom
When we are most alone is when we embrace another's loneliness.
Mitch Albom
Heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners.
Mitch Albom
No life is a waste," the Blue Man said. "The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we're alone.
Mitch Albom
So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.
Mitch Albom