Morrie Schwartz Quotes

The best preparation for living fully and well is to be prepared to die at any time, because impending death inspires clarity of purpose, a homing in on what really matters to you.

If we can make peace with dying, we can finally make peace with living.

In the beginning of life, we need others to survive. At the end of life, we need others to survive. In between, we need others as well.

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.

Do the kind 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 overhelmed with what comes back

If you don't have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don't have much at all.

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.

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

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.

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.

We have a sense that we should be like the mythical cowboy ... able to take on and conquer anything and live in the world without the need for other people.

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 ...

We're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going.

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

I believe that even though each person has an individual and unique self, the self means nothing outside the context of community or meaningful contact with other people.

The tension of opposites:
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.

You can find joy in practically any situation if you are open to the experience of happiness.

We've got a form of brainwashing going on in our country ... . 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.

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.

Dying is only one thing to be sad over ... Living unhappily is something else.

Once you learn how to diw, you learn how to live

Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another

The culture doesn't encourage you to think about such things until you're about to die. We're so wrapped up with egostical 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?

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

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

When people die, you always hear the expression, "You can't take it with you.

As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on - in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here

Keep your heart open for as long as you can, as wide as you can, for others and especially for yourself.

After you have wept and grieved for your physical losses, cherish the functions and the life you have left.

All this emphasis on youth - I don't buy it. Listen, I know what a misery being young can be, so don't tell me it's so great. All these kids who came to me with their struggles, their strife, their feelings of inadequacy, their sense that life was miserable, so bad they wanted to kill themselves ... and in addition to all the miseries, the young are not wise. They have very little understanding about life. Who wants to live everyday 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.

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, crashing 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.

I'd always been interested in psychology.

The little things, I can obey. But the big things - how we think, what we value - those you must choose yourself. You can't let anyone - or any society - determine those for you.

Don't let go too soon, but don't hang on too long.

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

Grieve and mourn for yourself not once or twice, but again and again.

You don't have to be nice all the time - just most of the time.

What tipped the scales was that psychology involved working with rats.