Book detail: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This memoir explores the deepening bond between Morrie Schwartz, a beloved college professor, and Mitch Albom, his former student, as they meet weekly to discuss life, love, and mortality. The story delves into the wisdom and insights Morrie imparts, offering a moving reflection on the human experience and the importance of living fully.
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“Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation.
..What happened to me? I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“For a while, we just ate like that, a sick old man, a healthy, younger man, both absorbing the quiet of the room. I would say it was an embarrassed silence, but I seemed to be the only one embarrassed.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“And slowly a discussion begins - as Morrie has wanted all along - about the effect of silence on human relations.
Why are we embarrassed by silence? What comfort do we find in all the noise?”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“ALS is like a lit candle: it melts your nerves and leaves your body a pile of wax..
you cannot support yourself standing.. you cannot sit up straight.
By the end, if you are still alive.. your soul, perfectly awake, is imprisoned inside a limp husk.. like something from a science fiction movie, the man frozen inside his own flesh.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“I snicker, but the idea is momentarily appealing. Part of me is scared of leaving school. Part of me wants to go desperately. Tension of opposites.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life. How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don’t let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry. Or how we feel a surge of love for a partner but we don’t say anything because we’re frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship.
Morrie’s approach was exactly the opposite. Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won’t hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, “All right, it’s just fear, I don’t have to let it control me. I see it for what it is.”
Same for loneliness: you let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely—but eventually be able to say, “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.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Morrie.. had developed his own culture - long before he got sick. He read books to find new ideas for his classes, visited with colleagues, kept up with old students, wrote letters to distant friends. He took more time eating and looking at nature..
He had created a cocoon of human activities - conversation, interaction, affection - and it filled his life like an overflowing soup bowl.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“..I buried myself in accomplishments, because with accomplishments, I believed I could control things, I could squeeze in every last piece of happiness before I got sick and died.. which I figured was my natural fate.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Each time we talk, he listens to me ramble, then he tries to pass on some sort of life lesson.
He warns me that money is not the most important thing, contrary to the popular view on campus.
He tells me I need to be "fully human."
He speaks of the alienation of youth and the need for "connectedness" with the society around me.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“In light of this, my visits with Morrie felt like a cleansing rinse of human kindness.
We talked about life and we talked about love.
We talked about one of Morrie's favourite subjects, compassion and why our society had such a shortage of it.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Now that child reminds me of something our sages taught. When a baby comes into the world, it's hands are clenched, right? Like this?"
He made a fist.
"Why? Because a baby, not knowing any better, wants to grab everything, to say 'The whole world is mine.'
"But when an old person dies, how does he do so? With his hands open. Why? Because he has learned the lesson."
What lesson? I asked.
He stretched open his empty fingers.
"We can take nothing with us.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“If you accept that you can die at any time - then you might not be as ambitious as you are”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“I decided I"m going to live-or at least try to live- the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Dying," Morrie suddenly said, "is only one thing to be sad over, Mitch. Living unhappily is something else. So many of the people who come to visit me are unhappy.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half asleep even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“It's very simple. As you grow, you learn more. IF you stayed at twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more then the negative that you're going to die, it's also the positive that you understand your going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Listen. You should know something. 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 again any how.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“And on a cold Sunday afternoon, he was joined in his home by a small group of friends and family for a 'living funeral'. Each of them spoke and paid tribute.. Some cried. Some laughed. One woman read a poem:
'My dear and loving cousin..
Your ageless heart
as you ,love through time, layer on layer,
tender sequoia..'
.. And all the heartfelt things we never get to say to those we love, Morrie said that day.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“That was the end of his driving..
That was the end of his walking free..
That was the end of his privacy..
And that was the end of his secret.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“The years after graduation hardened me into someone quite different from the strutting graduate.. headed for New York City, ready to offer the world his talent.
The world, I discovered, was not all that interested.
I wandered around my early twenties, paying rent and reading classifieds and wondering why the lights were not turning green for me.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“This is part of what a family is about, not just love, but letting others know there’s someone who is watching out for them. It’s what I missed so much when my mother died—what I call your ‘spiritual security’—knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“What happened to me? I asked myself.
Morris's high, smoky voice took me back to my university years, when I thought rich people were evil, a shirt and tie were prison clothes, and life without freedom to get up and go - motorcycle beneath you, breeze in your face, down the streets of Paris, into the mountains of Tibet - was not a good life at all. What happened to me?”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Had it not been for "Nightline," Morrie would have died without ever seeing me again. I had no good excuse for this, except the one that everyone these days seems to have.
I had become too wrapped up in the siren song of my life. I was busy.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Sometimes, when you're losing someone, you hang on to whatever tradition you can.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, 'Love each other or perish”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Take any emotion—love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions—if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them—you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. “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. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment’.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“I seemed to slip in a time warp when I visited Morrie, and I liked myself better when I was there.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Is this what comes at the end, I wondered?
Maybe death is the great equaliser, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life. How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don't let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“I bought this the day before at a shopping mall. I didn't want to forget him. Maybe I didn't want him to forget me.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“It's very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Morrie was in a wheelchair full-time now, getting used to helpers lifting him like a heavy sack from the chair to the bed and the bed to the chair.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship. Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“The little things, I can obey. 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.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“In the South American rainforest, there is a tribe called the Desana, who see the world as a fixed quantity of energy that flows between all creatures. Every birth must therefore engender a death, and every death brings forth another birth. This way, the energy of the world remains complete.
When they hunt for food, the Desana know the animals they kill will leave a hole in the spiritual well. But that hole will be filled, they believe, by the Desana hunters when they die. Were there no men dying, there would be no birds or fish being born. I like this idea. Morrie likes it, too. The closer he gets to goodbye, the more he seems to feel we are all creatures in the same forest. What we take, we must replenish.
"It's only fair," he says.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“The problem is that we don't believe that we are much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholic and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Say I was divorced, or living alone, or had no children. This disease—what I’m going
through—would be so much harder. I’m not sure I could do it. Sure, people would come
visit, friends, associates, but it’s not the same as having someone who will not leave. It’s
not the same as having someone whom you know has an eye on you, is watching you
the whole time.
“This is part of what a family is about, not just love, but letting others know there’s
someone who is watching out for them. It’s what I missed so much when my mother
died—what I call your ‘spiritual security’—knowing that your family will be there watching
out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame.”
He shot me a look.
“Not work,” he added”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Maybe that's worse, not letting ourselves be loved. Because we're too afraid of giving ourselves to someone we might lose.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“You see," he says to the girl, "you closed your eyes. That was the difference. Sometimes you cannot believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them too - even when you're in the dark. Even when you are falling.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Those who sat with him saw his eyes go moist when they spoke about something horrible, or crinkle in delight when they told him a really bad joke. He was always ready to openly display the emotion so often missing from my baby boomer generation. We are great at small talk: 'What do you do?' 'Where do you live?' But really listening to someone -- without trying to sell them something, pick them up, recruit them, or get some kind of status in return -- how often do we get this anymore?”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“اگر چه گونه مردن را یاد بگیری ، چه گونه زیستن را نیز فرا خواهی گرفت.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“But everyone knows someone who has died, I said.
Why is it so hard to think about dying?
'Because,' Morrie continued, 'most of us 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.'
And facing death changes all that?
'Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently.'
He sighed. 'Learn how to die, and you learn how to live.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“He tells my parents how I took every class he taught. He tells them, “You have a special boy here.” Embarrassed, I look at my feet. Before we leave, I hand my professor a present, a tan briefcase with his initials on the front. I bought this the day before at a shopping mall. I didn’t want to forget him. Maybe I didn’t want him to forget me.
“Mitch, you are one of the good ones,” he says, admiring the briefcase. Then he hugs me. I feel his thin arms around my back. I am taller than he is, and when he holds me, I feel awkward, older, as if I were the parent and he were the child.
He asks if I will stay in touch, and without hesitation I say, “Of course.” When he steps back, I see that he is crying.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“I drive a beat-up Mercury Cougar, with the windows down and the music up. I seek my identity in toughness - but it is Morrie's softness that draws me, and because he doesn't look at me as a kid trying to be something more than I am, I relax.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life. How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don't let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry. Or how we feel a surge of love for a partner but we don't say anything because we're frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Nurses came to his house to work with Morrie's withering legs.. bending them back and forth as if pumping water from a well..
He met with meditation teachers, and closed his eyes and narrowed his thoughts until his world shrunk down to a single breath, in and out, in and out.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“However, this is too harmonious, grand, and overwhelming a universe to believe it all on accident.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
“Life is a series of pulls back and forth... A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. Most of us live somewhere in the middle. A wrestling match...Which side wins? Love wins. Love always wins.”
Source: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson