The Legacy Letters Quotes

I wish I could wrap up the glitter star-green of this moment and hand it to you like an angel gift. Give you the heat lightning flying in jagged silence over the distant mountains. And the smell of September prairie grass and the even fainter scent of October pine now descending . . .

Kids are kids and not little adults. They're watching and listening to you all the time. They're figuring out the game plan but still don't know all the rules. Talk straight to them and they'll respect you for it.

In reality, Little Ones, there are two winters. One made for kids; the other for adults. The one made for adults is always too cold and always too long. The one made for kids is always perfect. A kid winter is an endless and wild snow carnival where all the rides are free.

Wake up. Be thankful. For whatever happens on this day, you are endlessly given the chance to start again-to be alive. And all of us should wish for that.

What good is an “I LOVE YOU” If said only when you have to?What good is it to ride a horse if you cannot gallop?What good is it to believe in someone if you doubt your own belief?

What good is an “I love you” if said only when you have to?

So How Much of a THING or THINGS is Enough? And if you have EVERYTHING, have you achieved perfect HAPPINESS?

Be the same person- with or without money.

Money. It fits around your neck like some permanent noose. always waiting for your next misstep.

Summer, dropping so easily a delicious everything upon your skin and lips. Like a never-ending kiss - taunting, deep, and luscious.

The Number One Rule of Working Is: DO THE BEST WORK YOU CAN. Why do anything but your best? What's the point?

As I see it, you GET married - but you MAKE a marriage.

Teach them what you love to do in life. It really doesn't matter what it is. It never does. Just show them how important a passion is . . .

So, if the truest currency of life is time, then how do you get more time? Because if more is merrier, than having more time should make us more happier. Right? Therefore, all we have to ask ourselves is can we buy more time? . . .

Summer, dropping so easily a delicious everything upon your skin and lips. Like a never-ending kiss—taunting, deep, and luscious. The sun. The heat. The thousand echoes of a timelessness before time, when every day seems longer than the next and no day seems likely to ever truly end. Summer.

Heavy rains and a good book. A perfect extravagance.

Rain with an umbrella while holding hands with your lover is damned sure nice.

And I don't care what age you are, kissing in the rain is the best.

How much better does being alive get then sitting beside a warm fire amidst a misty rainy morning.

Rain with no shoes is just as much fun as rain with big rubber galoshes.

Get someone-anyone-to read books to you. Having books read to you at any age is the supremo ultimato of living.

Remember, life is too short to be spent dancing with idiots.

And Sometimes I Feel as if I'm Only a Doorman Awaiting the Arrival of her Royal Majesty.

Read what you like, not what you're told to like. That way you'll read for a lifetime.

Why read? Because books are precious guides to our humanity—civilization’s backbone—that tenuous ridgeline that allows us to climb above the jungle and see what the horizon has to offer. Thus they represent the yearning to go beyond, to explore. Yet they are also human-sized . . .

Money can buy you knowledge, but not the wisdom to use it wisely.

So curious you must be. Like little calves poking their heads through the fence with big eyes and a headful of curiosity.

Rain. Tumble, bumble and, fall on me. Any old day, any old way. Come for a visit, or come for a stay. Rain, rain, don't go away.

Money can buy you everything to fill your time but it cannot buy time itself. And things are definitely not time.

Money - it can buy you a moment of glee but not a lifetime of happiness.

Read what you like, not what you’re told to like. That way you’ll read for a lifetime.

Remember, it's still a mystery to be an adult. If you knew it all before eighteen, you'd have nothing to look forward to.

It is you who must someday break through the protective polish of who you are, to become naked and powerful to who you can truly be.

There are hard days to live. And sometimes they will be just a few, and sometimes they will seem endless. And eventually you'll come to understand that we've all been there before - or more than likely are going there now. And maybe that idea will make it easier for you, and maybe it won't. But there will still be hard days to live, and you will still have to find your way through them.

MUSIC. Tunneling right down into your CORE and SOULTIME. Hep, sloppy, SEXY and cerebral. Chancy and hip-swinging like ELVIS and your first teenage KISS.

My God, what a sensation to be an atom in the scheme of such grandiosity. The allurement, the jazz, and the physics of it all . . .

You become a man when, in having children, you not only physically look after and protect them but also protect them with all the love and learning you have to give.

Why read? Because books are precious guides to our humanity—civilization’s backbone—that tenuous ridgeline that allows us to climb above the jungle and see what the horizon has to offer. Thus they represent the yearning to go beyond, to explore. Yet they are also human-sized. And made of paper and ink, and thus they come from the earth. Their physicality is what makes them immensely human. And they contain the flesh-and-bone thoughts of one person capturing one blink of time, now made immortal in the bound pages carried by your own hands and touched by your own eyes. How can such fragile and thin paper and spidery veins of ink be our most precious treasure, binding together the entire hope and legacy and language of a civilization—of our existence. We touch the book and turn the page, and thus we are bound to our destiny.

As an adult, be child-like as you learn but not child-ish as you live.

Remember, it’s still a mystery to be an adult. If you knew it all before eighteen, you’d have nothing to look forward to. Besides, to be wise and eighteen is as possible as catching lightning in a bottle…

Be generous with your life - love deeply, honestly, and without reservation.

Just because you're breathing, doesn't mean you're alive.

Eat Ice Cream. Read Books. Be Happy.

Sometimes the best way is to get out of your own way.

It's through traveling you make the great journey into yourself, and it's the clarity of extremes in traveling that forces you to meet yourself like you've never met yourself before.

It’s a fool who thinks having a kid is a right, which is the biggest crock of fish heads I’ve ever heard.

Love your kids and just be there for them. You don’t have to eyeball their every moment or to orchestrate all their comings and goings. They know this. They know that’s too much.

I want to remember warming your two a.m. bottle, clipping your locks, watching you be baptized, bathing you in the big porcelain sink… how I often laid you against my chest and felt the cradlesong of your tiny breaths as you fell asleep . . .

It is everything that makes a man. It is everything that makes this man. And that is who I am alive, and that is who I am dead.

Enjoy the RIDE NOW. You'll be SUCCESSFUL later, however YOU define SUCCESS.

Remember, Little Ones, everything is not important all the time. Only living is important all the time. Not things. Not money. Not more things and more endless money. Spend well the quality of your time. And yes, be greedy with your hours. If only to then give those hours away as the most precious gifts you have to offer to yourself, your family, and your friends. And yes, to my Little Ones.” –From The Legacy Letters–“The Everything and Nothing of Money.

Kids. They're not tin cans or sheetrock. They're laughing machines. Wind them up and watch them go.

There are hard days to live. You awake to a day when you feel you've done it all before, and you're going to do it again, so why do it at all.

There’s so much to learn. So much to enjoy. So terribly much to be curious about. Take your life and run with it. Make a habit of being alive. This much of anything, I have learned. And am still learning.

Money-it can buy your kids anything, but it cannot teach them love, respect, and the true value of living life without things.

Remember, Little Ones, everything is not important all the time. Only living is important all the time. Not things. Not money. Not more things and more endless money. Spend well the quality of your time. And yes, be greedy with your hours. If only to then give those hours away as the most precious gifts you have to offer to yourself, your family, and your friends.

Don’t have kids until you’re ready. And when you do have them, have them all the way. They aren’t like some Cadillac that you can turn back into the dealership after three years.

It’s a heck of a responsibility to look after a spirit. So give kids the best of who you are. That’s the most you can ever do.

Don’t spoil kids by trying to buy them off, to buy their time. Kids aren’t stupid. They know a bribe when they see one. They want a parent not a payoff.

Starting the day—Another chance to be new again. How many of us still wish for that? To be your own sunrise. To awaken like a prayer—both solemn and joyful at still being alive . . .

1 2 Next