The genius of life is its variety.
Taking just makes me feel like I’m dying. Giving makes me feel like I’m living.
Morrie was in a wheelchair full-time now, getting used to helpers lifting him like a heavy sack from the chair to the bed and the bed to the chair.
It’s the blending of the different notes that makes the music.
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.
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?
We are blinded by our regrets. We don’t realize who else we punish when we’re punishing ourselves.
It was the first time I had seen him unshaven, the small white whiskers looking so out of place, as if someone had shaken salt neatly across his cheeks and chin. How could there be new life in his beard when it was draining everywhere else?
Her dresses. Her shoes. A bottle of her perfume. You don’t need much to remember someone, Francisco. Even one thing will do.
Broken open is still open.
We who are born, are born to die.
Children begin by needing their parents. Over time, they reject them. Eventually, they become them.
Yet he refused to be depressed. Instead, Morrie had become a lightning rod of ideas.
Giving makes me feel like I’m living.
There was, in the construction of the universe, us down here, God up there, and you in between. When God seemed too intimidating to face, we could first come to you. It was like befriending the secretary outside the boss’s office.
War is the same every when and where.
When Morrie was with you, he was really with you. He looked you straight in the eye, and he listened as if you were the only person in the world.
Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.
On earth, we get the what of things. The why takes a little longer.
Love each other or perish,” Morrie said. “It’s good, no? And it’s so true. Without love, we are birds with broken wings.