Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie Quotes

Death ends a life, not a relationship.

This is part of what a family is about, not just love. It's knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.

You have to find what’s good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And, age is not a competitive issue.

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

Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others.

Love wins, love always wins.

Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward.

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.

Why are we embarassed by silence? What comfort do we find in all the noise?

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?

Without love we all like birds with broken wings.

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

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

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

Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others.

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

when he smiles it's as if you'd just told him the first joke on earth.

We all have same beginning (BIRTH), and we will have same ending (DEATH). So how different can we be?

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.

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.

For many of us, the curtain has just come down on childhood.

Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me.

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

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.

Then he commandeered the floor, shooting back and forth like some hot Latin lover. When he finished, everyone applauded. He could have stayed in that moment forever.

In a strange way, I envied the quality of Morrie's time even as I lamented its diminishing supply. Why did we bother with all the distractions we did?

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

After all these months, lying there, unable to move a leg or a foot – how could he find perfection in such an average day?Then I realized that was the whole point.

A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me. Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip.

Here's the thing, " he said. "People see me as a bridge. I'm not as alive as I used to be, but I'm not yet dead. I'm sort of...in-between

I had told him I was searching for my keys, that's what had taken me so long in the car, and I squeezed him tighter, as if I could crush my little lie.

I didn't want to forget him. Maybe I didn't want him to forget me.

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.

None of us can undo what we've done, or relive a life already recorded. But, ... there is no such thing as "too late" in life.

I may be dying, but I am surrounded by loving, caring souls. How many people can say that?

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

I earned a mater's degree in journalism and took the first job offered, as a sports writer. Instead of chasing my own fame, I wrote about famous athletes chasing theirs.

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

Be compassionate ... and take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be a better place.

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

Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?"-Morrie

The last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves.

Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?.. He would not wither. He would not be ashamed of dying.

Rock and roll, big band, the blues. He loved them all. He would close his eyes and with a blissful smile begin to move to his own sense of rhythm. It wasn't always pretty.

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.

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.

However, this is too harmonious, grand, and overwhelming a universe to believe it all on accident.

I was cranked to a fifth gear, and everything I did, I did on a deadline.

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

..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.