Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Quotes - Page 3

Everything in this life has a purpose, there are no mistakes, no coincidences.

We are all so bent and determined to get what we want, we miss the lessons that could be learned from life's experiences. Many of my AIDS patients discovered that the last year of their lives was by far their best. Many have said they wouldn't have traded the rich quality of that last year of life for a healthier body. Sadly, it is only when tragedy strikes that most of us begin attending to the deeper aspects of life. It is only then that we attempt to go beyond surface concerns-what we look like, how much money we make, and so forth-to discover what's really important.

The world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles...only by a spiritual journey...by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home. The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.

I say to people who care for people who are dying, if you really love that person and want to help them, be with them when their end comes close. Sit with them - you don't even have to talk. You don't have to do anything but really be there with them.

I was educated in line with the basic premise: work work work. You are only a valuable human being if you work. This is utterly wrong. Half working, half dancing - that is the right mixture. I myself have danced and played too little.

There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.

To love means not to impose your own powers on your fellow man but offer him your help. And if he refuses it, to be proud that he can do it on his own strength.

Death is the final stage of growth in this life. There is no total death. Only the body dies. The self or the spirit, or whatever you may wish to label it, is eternal. You may interpret this in any way that makes you comfortable.

We make progress in society only if we stop cursing and complaining about its shortcomings and have the courage to do something about them.

Think of a lifeless forest in which a small plant pushes its head upward, out of the ruin. In our grief process, we are moving into life from death, without denying the devastation that came before.

My patients taught me not how to die, but how to live.

It is important to feel the anger without judging it, without attempting to find meaning in it. It may take many forms: anger at the health-care system, at life, at your loved one for leaving. Life is unfair. Death is unfair. Anger is a natural reaction to the unfairness of loss.

We all have to go through the tumbler a few times before we can emerge as a crystal.

As far as service goes, it can take the form of a million things. To do service, you don't have to be a doctor working in the slums for free, or become a social worker. Your position in life and what you do doesn't matter as much as how you do what you do.

We bring a deeper commitment to our happiness when we fully understand, that our time left is limited and we really need to make it count.

Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.

In the so-called civilized world, children are physically, sexually and/or emotionally abused; they are the leaders of our future. When children are raised in such a hostile and violent environment, how can we hope for a harmonious future for all people of this world? In this light, the purpose of human life is to achieve our own spiritual evolution, to get rid of negativity, to establish harmony among our physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual quadrants, to learn to live in harmony within the family, community, nation, ..treating all of mankind as brothers and sisters.

And after your death, when most of you for the first time realize what life here is all about, you will begin to see that your life here is almost nothing but the sum total of every choice you have made during every moment of your life. Your thoughts, which you are responsible for, are as real as your deeds. You will begin to realize that every word and every deed affects your life and has also touched thousands of lives.

We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.

Children who die young are some of our greatest teachers. We are allowed to die when we have taught what we came to teach and when we have learned what we came to learn.

For those who seek to understand it, death is a highly creative force. The highest spiritual values of life can originate from the thought and study of death.

I once considered writing a book called I'm not OK and you're not OK, and that's OK.

I believe every person has a guardian spirit or angel. They assist us in the transition between life and death and they also help us pick our parents before we are born.

Death is a graduation. When we're taught all the things we came to teach, learned all the things we came to learn, then we're allowed to graduate.

I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.