I believe, as the Reb once told me, that, with a little faith, people can fix things, and they truly can change, because at that moment, you could not believe otherwise.
Sully did this now, finished unfinished sentence, believing that the words people do not speak are louder than the ones they do.
Man rarely knows his own power,” the old man said.
You counted the minutes, but did you use them wisely?
We’re teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it. Create your own.
He draped himself in her sad memory, because it was the closest thing to having her around.
Counting life’s moments had led, inevitably, to counting them down.
He tolerated it until he could tolerate it no more.
A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.
A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me. Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip.
The curtain has just come down on childhood.
Katherine would later reason that if anything were going to take away her beautiful, funny, precious older sister, it would be that her heart was so big, it exploded.
You can’t fit the Lord in a box. But you can gather stories, tradition, wisdom, and in time, you needn’t lower the shelf; God is already nearer to thee.
Those who sat with him saw his eyes go moist when they spoke about something horrible, or crinkle in delight when they told him a really bad joke. He was always ready to openly display the emotion so often missing from my baby boomer generation. We are great at small talk: ‘What do you do?’ ‘Where do you live?’ But really listening to someone – without trying to sell them something, pick them up, recruit them, or get some kind of status in return – how often do we get this anymore?
All right. In that final minute, I would say, ‘Look, Lord, I’ve done X amount of good stuff on earth. I have tried to follow your teachings and to pass them on. I have loved my family. I’ve been part of a community. And I have been, I think, fairly good to people. “‘So, Heavenly Father, for all this, what is my reward?”’ And what do you think God will say? He smiled. “He’ll say, ‘Reward?
I felt as if time were suddenly precious, water going down an open drain, and I could not move quickly enough.
Holding him like that moved me in a way I cannot describe, except to say I felt the seeds of death inside his shrivelling frame, and as I laid him in his chair, adjusting his head on the pillows, I had the coldest realisation that our time was running out.
How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful minutes, then.
He told his friends that if they really wanted to help him, they would treat him not with sympathy but with visits, phone calls, a sharing of their problems – the way they had always... because Morrie had always been a wonderful listener.
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. “In business, people negotiate to win. They negotiate to get what they want. Maybe you’re too used to that. Love is different. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else’s situation as you are about your own.