Inspirational Quotes by Mitch Albom — Words of Wisdom for Daily Success

“With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we can’t appreciate what we have”

“When you are measuring life, you are not living it.”

“It's such a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it.”

“You can find something truly important in an ordinary minute.”

“One day spent with someone you love can change everything.”

“People have't found meaning in their lives so they're running all the time looking for it.”

“Have you found someone to share your heart with? Are you giving to your community? Are you at peace with yourself? Are you trying to be as human as you can be?”

“I took my orders, too. But if i couldn't keep you alive, I thought I could at least keep you together. In the middle of a big war, you go looking for a small idea to believe in. When you find one, you hold it the way a soldier holds his crucifix when he's praying in a foxhole.”

“Death ends a life, but not a relationship.”

“In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive, right? And at the end of life, when you get like me, you need others to survive, right?”

“One afternoon, I am complaining about the confusion of my age, what is expected of me versus what I want for myself.”

“You live on - in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here...Death ends life, not a relationship.”

“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.”

“The things you spend so much time on--all this work you do--might not seem as important. You might have to make room for some more spiritual things.”

“You closed your eyes. That was the difference. Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to 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're falling.”

“Wait a Christian woman called for a Jewish rabbi?”

“It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody's out there.”

“Love- the infatuation kind- 'he's so handsome, she's so beautiful'- that can shrivel. As soon as something goes wrong, that kind of love can fly out the window.”

“What do people fear most about death? I asked the reb.”

“Much of what we called "depression" was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures we weren't willing to work for.”

“You can feel the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain-- no matter how smart or accomplished--they cry, they yearn, they hurt. But instead of looking down on things, they look up, which is where I should have been looking, too. Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things: comfort, love and a peaceful heart.”

“Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.”

“Hopelessness can be contagious, but hope can be too. And there is no medicine to match it.”

“Hopeless change be contagious, but hope can be too. And there is no medicine to match it.”

“Do you prefer Mitch? Or is Mitchell better?'..”

“What is false about hope?”

“Hopelessness can be contagious. But hope can be too, and there is no medicine to match it.”

“I'm on the last great journey here--and people want me to tell them what to pack.”

“What a waste.. All those people saying all those wonderful things, and Irv never got to hear any of it.”

“Yet he refused to be depressed. Instead, Morrie had become a lightning rod of ideas.”

“..And because he was still able to move his hands - Morrie always spoke with both hands waving - he showed great passion when explaining how you face the end of life.”

“There are some mornings when I cry and cry and mourn for myself. Some mornings, I'm so angry and bitter. But it doesn't last too long. Then I get up and say, 'I want to live..'”

“It's natural to die," he said again. "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.”

“.. when all this started, I asked myself, 'Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live?' I decided I'm going to live - or at least try to live - the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humour, with composure.”

“His eyes were more sunken than I remembered them, and his cheekbones more pronounced. This gave him a harsher, older look - until he smiled, of course, and the sagging cheeks gathered up like curtains.”

“That's what we're all looking for. A certain peace with the idea of dying. If we know, in the end, that we can ultimately have that peace with dying, then we can finally do the really hard thing." Which is? "Make peace with living.”

“Morrie,” Koppel said, “that was seventy years ago your mother died. The pain still goes on?”

“Tell you what. After I'm dead, you talk. And I'll listen.”

“Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? He could be research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me.”

“As my visits with Morrie go on, I begin to read about death, how different cultures view the final passage. There is a tribe in the North American Arctic, for example, who believe that all things on earth have a soul that exists in a miniature form of the body that hold it -so that a deer has a tiny deer inside it, and a man has a tiny man inside him. When the large being dies, that tiny form lives on. It can slide into something being born nearby, or it can go to a temporary resting place in the sky, in the belly of a great feminine spirit, where it waits until the moon can send it back to earth.”

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

“Being unheard is the ground floor of giving up, and giving up is the ground floor of doing yourself in. It’s not so much, what’s the point? It’s more like, what’s the difference?”

“It’s not contagious, you know. Death is as natural as life. It’s part of the deal we made.”

“I hope you never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that pounds away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain. And in so doing, they split you apart.”

“I used to think I knew everything. I was a "smart person" who "got things done," and because of that, the higher I climbed, the more I could look down and scoff at what seemed silly or simple, even religion.”

“But she wasn’t around, and that’s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone.”

“But behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begin.”

“Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to 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're falling.”

“Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others.”

“‏اگر چه گونه مردن را یاد بگیری ، چه گونه زیستن را نیز فرا خواهی گرفت.”

“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.”

“But everyone knows someone who has died, I said.”

“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?”

“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.”

“Maybe that's worse, not letting ourselves be loved. Because we're too afraid of giving ourselves to someone we might lose.”

“Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others.”

“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.”

“You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship”

“Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, 'Love each other or perish”

“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.”

“Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don’t see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you’re surrounded by people who say ‘I want mine now,’ you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it.”

“This is how you start to get respect, by offering something that you have.”

“Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.”

“There is no experience like having children.’ That’s all. There is no substitute for it. You cannot do it with a friend. You cannot do it with a lover. If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.”

“Now you know how badly someone wanted you, Charley. Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted.”

“We’re so wrapped up with egotistical 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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Jauh lebih menyenangkan merasa bahwa Tuhan mendengarkanmu dan mengatakan tidak, ketimbang merasa tak ada siapa pun yang mendengarkanmu”

“Personally, I always wondered about authors and celebrities who loudly declared there was no God. It was usually when they were healthy and popular and being listened to by crowds. What happens, I wondered, in the quiet moments before death? By then, they have lost the stage, the world has moved on. If suddenly, in their last gasping moments, through fear, a vision, a late enlightenment, they change their minds about God, who would know?”

“Man invents nothing God did not create first.”

“Look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that I must differ. No matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something they can’t explain, something that created it all at the end of the search.”

“It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody’s out there.”

“Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.”

“Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.”