Quotessence
Home / Books / Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson

Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson

Book by Mitch Albom · 7 quotes · Life, Death, Dying

Filter quotes by topic

Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson Quotes

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”