Morrie Schwartz Quotes - Page 2

All younger people should know something. If you’re always battling against getting older, you’re always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyhow.

If the culture doesn't work, don't buy it.

What is it about silence that makes people uneasy?

Build a little community of those you love and who love you

When you learn to die, you learn to live.

All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I'm not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I'm going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I'm going to experience them as well.

We put our values in the wrong things. And it leads to very disillusioned lives.

Once you learn how to die you learn how to live.

It’s natural to die. The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don’t see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we’re human we’re something above nature.

For me, living means I can be responsive to the other person. It means I can show my emotions and my feelings. Talk to them. Feel with them.

Life is like a wrestling match- we struggle to fight but we never know that the only side that wins is the one with great love in it.

Well, the truth is, if you really listen to that bird on your shoulder, if you accept that you can die at any time–then you might not be as ambitious as you are.

My contention is that as long as you have other faculties-the emotional, psychological, intuitive faculties-you haven't lost yourself or even diminished yourself. Don't be ashamed when you're physically limited or dysfunctional; don't think that you're any less because of your condition. In fact, I feel I am even more myself than I was before I got this illness because I have been able to transcend many of the psychological and emotional limitations I had before I developed ALS.

These were people so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. There 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. Money is no substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. I can tell you as I'm sitting here dying, when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you're looking for, no matter how much of them you have.

The truth is, part of me is every age. 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.

Everything that gets born dies.

The best way to deal with that is to live in a fully conscious, compassionate, loving way. Don't wait until you're on your deathbed to recognize that this is the only way to live.

If we can remember the feeling of love we once had, we can die without ever going away.

Acceptance is not a talent you either have or don't have. It's a learned response. My meditation teacher made a great point about the difference between a reaction and a response: You may not have control over your initial reaction to something, but you can decide what your response will be. You don't have to be at the mercy of your emotions, and acceptance can be your first step toward empowerment . . . For me, acceptance has been the cornerstone to my having an emotionally healthy response to my illness.

And, in addition to all the miseries, the young are not wise. They have very little understanding about life. Who wants to live every day when you don't know what's going on? When people are manipulating you, telling you to buy this perfume and you'll be beautiful, or this pair of jeans and you'll be sexy-and you believe them! It's such nonsense.

Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer more than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims....and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? I'm almost......drawn to them.

There is no experience like having children...If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.

When you look at it that way, you can see how absurd it is that we individualize ourselves with our fences and hoarded possessions.

Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward.

One hundred and ten years from now no one who is here now will be alive.