Mitch Albom Quotes

Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.

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

What's wrong with being number 2?

...You can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.

Remember, the only difference between 'marital' and 'martial' is where you put the 'i'.

I think what you notice most when you haven’t been home in a while is how much the trees have grown around your memories.

Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralysing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.

There are no random acts...We are all connected...You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind.

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've lived through a lot of wars, I said. "Yes." Do they ever make more sense? "No.

Courage is confused with picking up arms and cowardness is confused with laying them down.

Scenery without solace is meaningless.

"You marked the minutes," the old man said. "But did you use them wisely? To be still? To cherish? To be grateful? To lift and be lifted?"

Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others.

That's what heaven is. You get to make sense of your yesterdays

You can be a mama's boy, be a daddy's boy, but you can't be both. So you cling to the one you think you might lose.

No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we're alone.

But our eyes are different, what you see ain't what I see.

We don't see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become.

Most of us all 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.

Mankind is connected in ways it does not understand - even in dreams.

I believe that you live on inside the hearts and minds of everyone you've touched while you were here on earth.

There is a big confusion in this country over what we want verses what we need...you need food. You want a chocolate sundae.

I often find that I rock back and forth with a beat in my head constantly. If i stop rocking, it usually means I've hit a snag in my writing.

But fates are connected in ways we don’t understand.

Love wins, love always wins.

I don't know what it is about food your mother makes for you, especially when it's something that anyone can make - pancakes, meat loaf, tuna salad - but it carries a certain taste of memory.

Once heaven is done with grandma, we'd like her back, thanks.

The most important elements of faith [are] believing in something bigger than yourself, taking care of those less fortunate than you.

the words people do not speak are louder than the ones they do.

If you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy, because it's going to happen anyhow.

What you have done to this point cannot be undone. What you do next... It is still unwritten.

You have peace," the old woman said, "when you make it with yourself.

People are only mean when they are threatened.

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

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.

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.

Belief, hard work, love–you have those things, you can do anything.

Knowing something and understanding it were not the same thing.

If we knew what comes next, we never would have worried.

Have you ever really had a teacher? One who saw you as a raw but precious thing, a jewel that, with wisdom, could be polished to a proud shine?

You know what really offers you satisfaction? Offering others what you have to give.

I'm being made aware of my mortality all the time.

A heart weighs more when it splits in two; it crashes in the chest like a broken plane.

Once, lovers on faraway shores sat by candlelight and dipped ink to parchment, writing words that could not be erased. They took an evening to compose their thoughts, maybe the next evening as well.

I don't know about Heaven or Hell, but I do know that we are visited all the time by the spirits of those who affected us in life.

The secret to happiness...be satisfied and be grateful.

Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things: comfort, love, and a peaceful heart.

Detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.

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