Top 447 Quotes & Sayings by Mitch Albom - Page 6

We move through places every day that would never have been if not for those who came before us. Our workplaces, where we spend so much time--we often think they began with our arrival. That's not true.

He had his time measures and he had her. That was his life. For as long as he could remember, it had been that way, Dor and Alli, even as children. "I do not want to die," she whispered. "You will not die." "I want to be with you." "You are.

All that happens when your dreams come true is a slow, melting realization that it wasn't what you thought.

How could he find perfection in such an average day? Then I realized this was the whole point.

Once, lovers on faraway shores sat by candlelight and dipped ink to parchment, writing words that could not be erased. They took an evening to compose their thoughts, maybe the next evening as well.

There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage... Your values must be alike. And the biggest one of those values, Mitch?" Yes? "Your belief in the importance of your marriage.

It's like going back to being a child again. Someone to bathe you. Someone to lift you. Someone to wipe you. We all know how to be a child. It's inside all of us. For me, It's just remembering how to enjoy it.

Perdonare "Forgive Yourself)

Tension of opposites.

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.

Didn't people call New Year's the loneliest night on the calender? She took comfort in knowing somewhere on the planet, someone might be as miserable as she was.

It was sad, the imbalance of it all. Why do kids assume so much from one parent and hold the other to a lower, looser standard?

War could bond men like a magnet, but like a magnet it could repel them, too. The things they saw, the things they did. Sometimes they just wanted to forget.

With Marguerite, he wanted only time—more and more time—and he was granted it, nighttimes and daytimes and nighttimes again.

It's amazing the fantasies your mind can put together.

when your time came, it came, and that was that. You might say something smart on your way out, but you might just as easily say something stupid.

Suddenly, details seemed extremely important. Details were something to grab on to, a way to insert myself into the story.

He almost told her everything right then, that very moment. But you grab a moment, or you let it pass. He let it pass.

We’re gonna make up for that. We’re gonna live a long time together.

What about a man who sits down to wonder Why life has cheated him? Thinks about his situation Hangs his head and cries Will we pretend, his problems don't exist? He's reaching out for help-will we selfishly resist? What about your brother? He's crying What about your brother? He's dying What about your brother?

Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent... But detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That's how you are able to leave it...You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief... 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. "All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.

I believe he died this way on purpose. I believe he wanted no chilling moments, no one to witness his last breath and be haunted by it, the way he had been haunted by his mother's death-notice telegram or by his father's corpse in the city morgue.

It's nice that you spend a day with your mother,' she said. "Children should do it more often.

When you are an outcast, even a tossed stone can be cherished.

There are no random acts.

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.

Sometimes you have to do things when sad things happen.

When I lacked even the self-respect to keep myself alive, she dabbed my cuts and I fell back into being a son; I fell as easily as you fall into your pillow at night. And I didn't want it to end. That's the best way I can explain it. I knew it was impossible. But I didn't want it to end.

She felt worthless and hollow. There was no hope of fixing this. And when hope is gone, time is punishment.

What is it about childhood that never lets you go, even when you're so wrecked it's hard to believe you ever were a child?

But they wanted you. Time is not something you give back. The very next moment may be answer to your prayer. To deny that is to deny the most important part of the future.

A child embarrassed by his mother,” she said, “is just a child who hasn’t lived long enough.

The truth is, when our mothers held us, rocked us, stroked our heads -none of us ever got enough of that. We all yearn in some way to return to those days when we were completely taken care of - unconditional love, unconditional attention. Most of us didn't get enough.

No, Edward. You are here so I can teach you something. All the people you meet here have one thing to teach you.

Dor shook his head. “The phrase. What does it mean?” Sarah wondered if he was kidding. “Time flies? You know, like, time goes really fast and suddenly you’re saying goodbye and it’s like no time passed at all?” His eyes drifted. He liked it. “Time flies.” “With you,” she added.

No matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don't see what we could be.

Kids chase the love that eludes them.

Young men go to war. Sometimes because they 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.

There was always a quest for more minutes, more hours, faster progress to accomplish more in each day. The simple joy of living between summers was gone.

The second death. To think that you died and no one would remember you. I wondered if this was why we tried so hard to make our mark in America. To be known. Think of how important celebrity has become. We sing to get famous; expose our worst secrets to get famous; lose weight, eat bugs, even commit murder to get famous. Our young people post their deepest thoughts on public web sites. They run cameras from their bedrooms. It’s as if we are screaming Notice Me! Remember Me! Yet the notoriety barely lasts. Names quickly blur and in time are forgotten.

Small towns are like metronomes; with the slightest flick, the beat changes.

But man invents nothing God did not create first.

Everything man does today to be efficient, to fill the hour? It does not satisfy. It only makes him hungry to do more. Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time.

We all know how to be a child.

To know you're going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That's better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you're living.

There are many things in my life that I wish I could take back. Many moments I would recast.

Most of us all walk around as if we're sleepwalking. We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.

When you're in bed, you're dead

I made the wrong choice ," I whispered. My mother shook her head. "A child should never have to choose.

A wind blew, and the sand around his drawing scattered. He wrapped his fingers inside his wife's, and Father Time rekindled a connection he had only ever had with her. He surrendered to that sensation and felt the final drops of their lives touch one another, like water in a cave, top meets bottom, Heaven meets Earth. As their eyes closed, a different set of eyes opened, and they rose from the ground as a shared south, up and up, a sun and a moon in a single sky.

Shouldn't the world stop? Don't they know what has happened to me?

At that moment i felt lonelier than i'd ever felt before, and that loneliness seemed to squat in my lungs and crush all but my most minimal breathing. There was nothing left to say. Not about this. Not about anything.

When death takes your mother, it steals that word forever.

He was near tears, 'Who do I blame?' he kept asking me. 'There is no God.I can only blame myself.'" The Reb's face tightened, as if in pain. "That," he said, softly, "is a terrible self-indictment." Worse than an unanswered prayer? "Oh yes. It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody's out there.

Aging is not just decay, you know, its growth.

You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found meaning . Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can't wait until sixty-five.

The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature. You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.

Taffy. He thinks about taffy. He thinks it would take his teeth out now, but he would eat it anyhow, if it meant eating it with her.

Had he known his death was imminent, he might have gone somewhere else. Instead, he did what we all do. He went about his dull routine as if all the days in the world were still to come. ~pg 4

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?