Mitch Albom

 

“There is a big confusion in this country over what we want versus what we need,”
Morrie said. “You need food, you want a chocolate sundae. You have to be honest with
yourself. You don’t need the latest sports car, you don’t need the biggest house.”
“The truth is, you don’t get satisfaction from those things. You know what really gives you
satisfaction?”
What?
“Offering others what you have to give.”
– Mitch Albom

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

Nothing haunts us like the things we don’t say.
– Mitch Albom

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.
– Mitch Albom

The truth is, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.
– Mitch Albom

Holding anger is a poison… It eats you from inside… We think that by hating someone we
hurt them… But hatred is a curved blade… And the harm we do to others… we also do to
ourselves.
– 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

Death ends a life, not a relationship.
– Mitch Albom

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.
– Mitch Albom

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.
– 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

The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.
– Mitch Albom

“Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do
something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t. You take certain things for
granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of
opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.”
Sounds like a wrestling match, I say.
“A wrestling match.” He laughs. “Yes, you could describe life that way.”
So which side wins, I ask?
“Which side wins?”
He smiles at me, the crinkled eyes, the crooked teeth.
“Love wins. Love always wins.”
– Mitch Albom

All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.
– Mitch Albom

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.
– Mitch Albom

I thought about all the people I knew who spent many of their waking hours feeling sorry for
themselves. How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful
minutes, then on with the day.
– Mitch Albom

Without love, we are birds with broken wings.
– Mitch Albom

Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with soaking joy. But sometimes,
under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending
to its roots, keeping itself alive.
– Mitch Albom

There are no random acts. We are all connected. You can no more separate one life from
another, than you can separate a breeze from the wind.
– Mitch Albom

“We’ve got a sort of brainwashing going on in our country,” Morrie sighed. “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.”
– Mitch Albom

The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be
strong enough to say if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it.
– Mitch Albom

One day spent with someone you love can change everything.
– Mitch Albom

But there’s a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your
face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But
behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begin.
– Mitch Albom

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.
– Mitch Albom

Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won’t hurt you. It will only help. If
you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, “All
right, it’s just fear, I don’t have to let it control me. I see it for what it is.”
– Mitch Albom

What is it about silence that makes people uneasy?
– Mitch Albom

When you look into your mother’s eyes, you know that is the purest love you can find on this
earth.
– Mitch Albom

“People are only mean when they’re threatened,” he said later that day, “and that’s what our
culture does. That’s what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are
threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start
looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.”
– Mitch Albom

Accept who you are; and revel in it.
– Mitch Albom

“I heard a nice little story the other day,” Morrie says. He closes his eyes for a moment and I
wait.
“Okay. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time.
He’s enjoying the wind and the fresh air – until he notices the other waves in front of him,
crushing against the shore.”
“My God, this is terrible,” the wave says. “Look what’s going to happen to me!”
“Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him,
“Why do you look so sad?”
The first wave says, “You don’t understand! We’re all going to crash! All of us waves are
going to be nothing! Isn’t it terrible?”
The second wave says, “No, you don’t understand. You’re not a wave, you’re part of the
ocean.”
– Mitch Albom

Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.
– Mitch Albom

“Everyone knows they’re going to die,” he said again, “but nobody believes it. If we did, we
would do things differently.”
– Mitch Albom

Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to
aspire to.
– Mitch Albom

“Be compassionate,” Morrie whispered. “And take responsibility for each other. If we only
learned those lessons, this world would be so much better a place.”
He took a breath, then added his mantra: “Love each other or die.”
– Mitch Albom

“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? What reward? That’s what you
were supposed to do!'”
– 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

These were people so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were
embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works. You can’t
substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of
comradeship.
– Mitch Albom

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

Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.
– Mitch Albom

This is part of what a family is about, not just love. It’s knowing that your family will be there
watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.
– Mitch Albom

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the
prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods
completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.
– Mitch Albom

Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know.
– Mitch Albom

Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Don’t wait.
– Mitch Albom

There is no experience like having children. 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

Every life has one true love snapshot.
– Mitch Albom

Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you’re not really losing it. You’re just
passing it on to someone else.
– 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

When someone is in your heart, they’re never truly gone. They can come back to you, even
at unlikely times.
– Mitch Albom

Young men go to war. Sometimes because they are have to, sometimes because they want
to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life,
which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice
confused with laying them down.
– Mitch Albom

The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.
– Mitch Albom

Here’s what I mean by building your own subculture. I don’t mean you disregard every rule of
your community. I don’t go around naked, for example. I don’t run through red lights. The
little things, I can obey. But the big things – how we think, what we value – those you must
choose for yourself. You can’t let anyone – or any society – determine those for you.
– Mitch Albom

Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live? I decided
I’m going to live – or at least try to live – the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with
humor, with composure.
– Mitch Albom

“You have peace,” the old woman said, “when you make it with yourself.”
– Mitch Albom

There is everything you know and there is everything that happens. When the two do not
line up, you make a choice.
– Mitch Albom

The truth is, part of me is every age. I’m a three-year-old, I’m a five-year-old, I’m a thirty-
seven-year-old, I’m a fifty-year-old. I’ve been through all of them, and I know what it’s like. I
delight in being a child when it’s appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man
when it’s appropriate to be a wise old man. Think of all I can be! I am every age, up to my
own.
– Mitch Albom