Morrie Schwartz Quotes

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

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. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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

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

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

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? ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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

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

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. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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 ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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

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. ~ Morrie Schwartz

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. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

Tears are okay

[Morrie Schwartz] ~ Mitch Albom

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. ~ Morrie Schwartz

I'd always been interested in psychology. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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

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 ... ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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 yourself. You can't let anyone-or any society- determine those for you. ' -Morrie Schwartz ~ Mitch Albom

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

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. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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

Once you learn how to diw, you learn how to live ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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 ~ Morrie Schwartz.

There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things" -he sighed- "these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do?
Morrie Schwartz ~ Mitch Albom

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. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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

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

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

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

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. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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 ~ Morrie Schwartz.

If we can make peace with dying, we can finally make peace with living. ~ Morrie Schwartz

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. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

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.' - Morrie Schwartz ~ Mitch Albom

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

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. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

By exerting its will, Descartes declared, the immaterial human mind could cause the material human machine to move. This bears repeating, for it is an idea that, more than any other, has thrown a stumbling block across the path of philosophers who have attempted to argue that the mind is immaterial: for how could something immaterial act efficaciously on something as fully tangible as a body? Immaterial mental substance is so ontologically different-that is, such a different sort of thing-from the body it affects that getting the twain to meet has been exceedingly difficult. To be sure, Descartes tried. He argued that the mental substance of the mind interacts with the matter of the brain through the pineal gland, the organ he believed was moved directly by the human soul. The interaction allowed the material brain to be physically directed by the immaterial mind through what Descartes called "animal spirits"-basically a kind of hydraulic fluid. ~ Jeffrey M. Schwartz

With the sole exception of President Bill Clinton, whose 'bridge to the 21st century' evoked the vision and optimism of other great Democratic presidents of the 20th century, such as FDR and John F. Kennedy, pessimism about America's economic future has been the hallmark of modern progressivism. ~ Bernard L. Schwartz

We are not passive recipients but active participants in our own process of perception" (Nancy Kanwisher) ~ Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Victim-stancing - whereby the offender claims and believes that s/he is the real victim (one of the most prevalent sophistries in the false memory controversies) ~ Harvey L. Schwartz

By midafternoon soft snow is falling, muffling four voices that rise from the cardinal points around the circle, north, south, east, and west,intoning names from registration lists obtained by Rainer from museum archives in Berlin--long lists that represent but tiny fractions of that fraction of new prisoners who survived, however briefly, the first selections on this platform and were tattooed with small blue numbers. The impeccable lists include city and country of origin, arrival date, and date of death, not infrequently on that same day or the next.

Column after column, page after page, of the more common family names ascend softly from the circle of still figures to be borne away on gusts of wind-whirled snow. Schwartz, Herschel; Schwartz, Isaac A.; Schwartz, Isaac D.; Schwartz, Isidor--Who? Isidor? You too? The voices are all but inaudible as befits snuffed-out identities that exist only on lists, with no more reality than forgotten faces in old photo albums--Who's this bald guy in the back? Stray faces of no more significance than wind fragments of these names of long ago, of no more substance than this snowflake poised one moment on his pen before dissolving into voids beyond all Knowing. In Paradise 87-88 ~ Peter Matthiessen

The elks live up in the hills and in the spring they come down for their annual convention. It is very interesting to watch them come down to the water hole. And you should see them run when they find that it's only a water hole. What they're looking for is elk-ohole. ~ Morrie Ryskind

I believe if I refuse to grow old, I can stay young 'til I die. ~ Stephen Schwartz

Oh, you have a kitchen! I'm gonna like this place very much. ~ Morrie Ryskind

So if you care to find me/ Look to the western sky/ As someone told me lately/ Everyone deserves the chance to fly!/ And if I'm flying solo/ At least I'm flying free/ Tell those who'd ground me/ Take a message back from me/ Tell them how I am defying gravity!/ I'm flying high defying gravity/ And soon I'll match them in renown./ And nobody in all of Oz/ No Wizard that there is or was/ Is ever gonna bring me down!/ ~ Stephen Schwartz

Telling scary stories is something people have done for thousands of years, for most of us like being scared in that way. Since there isn't any danger, we think it is fun. ~ Alvin Schwartz

I've found that people reveal nothing of their true selves except within their art and their sin." ~ Dacey Sinnett, 'ROAM ~ Dez Schwartz

Certainly there's got to be a little bit of reality show fatigue happening. ~ Josh Schwartz

choices are based upon expected utility. And once you have had experience with particular restaurants, CDs, or movies, future choices will be based upon what you remember about these past experiences, in other words, on their remembered utility. ~ Barry Schwartz

To be the child of immigrants from Eastern Europe is in itself a special kind of experience; and an important one to an author. He has heard two languages through childhood, the one spoken with ease at home, and the other spoken with ease in the streets and at school, but spoken poorly at home. ~ Delmore Schwartz

But Mr. Success reacted differently when he got knocked down. He bounced up, learned a lesson, forgot the beating, and moved upward. ~ David J. Schwartz

BUT IF YOU'RE SMART, YOU'LL LEARN YOUR LESSON WELL. ~ Stephen Schwartz

The Choir And Music Of Solitude And Silence -

Silence is a great blue bell
Swinging and ringing, tinkling and singing,
In measure's pleasure, and in the supple symmetry
of the soaring of the immense intense wings
glinting against
All the blue radiance above us and within us, hidden
Save for the stars sparking, distant and unheard in their
singing.
And this is the first meaning of the famous saying,
The stars sang. They are the white birds of silence
And the meaning of the difficult famous saying that the
sons and daughters of morning sang,
Meant and means that they were and they are the children
of God and morning,
Delighting in the lights of becoming and the houses of
being,
Taking pleasure in measure and excess, in listening as in
seeing.

Love is the most difficult and dangerous form of courage.
Courage is the most desperate, admirable and noble kind of
love.

So that when the great blue bell of silence is stilled and
stopped or broken
By the babel and chaos of desire unrequited, irritated and
frustrated,
When the heart has opened and when the heart has spoken
Not of the purity and symmetry of gratification, but action
of insatiable distraction's dissatisfaction,

Then the heart says, in all its blindness and faltering
emptiness:
There is no God. Because I am hope. And hope must be Delmore Schwartz