Morrie Quotes & Sayings

We're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. — Morrie Schwartz.

What tipped the scales was that psychology involved working with rats. — Morrie Schwartz.

Be compassionate," Morrie whispered. And take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much better a place."
He took a breath, then added his mantra: "Love each other or die. — Mitch Albom

What is it about silence that makes people uneasy? — Morrie Schwartz.

Life is like a wrestling match- we struggle to fight but we never know that the only side that wins is the one with great love in it. — Morrie Schwartz.

We have a sense that we should be like the mythical cowboy ... able to take on and conquer anything and live in the world without the need for other people. — Morrie Schwartz.

It's not to late to ... ask yourself if you really are the person you want to be, and if not, who you do want to be. — Morrie Schwartz.

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.
Sometimes, they say, the moon is so busy with the new souls of the world that it disappears from the sky. That is why we have moonless nights. But in the end, the moon always returns, as do we all.
That is what they believe. — Mitch Albom

It's natural to die. 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. — Morrie Schwartz.

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. — Mitch Albom

I don't mean you disregard every rule of your community. I don't go around naked, for example. I don't run through red lights. The little things, I can obey. But 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. ' -Morrie Schwartz — Mitch Albom

Morrie went to his funeral. He came home depressed. "What a waste," he said. "All those people saying all those wonderful things, and Irv never got to hear any of it. — Mitch Albom

Ness-that Morrie was looking at life from some very different place than anyone else I knew. A healthier place. A more sensible place. And he was about to die.
But it was also becoming clear to me- through his courage, his humor, his patience, and his openIf some mystical clarity of thought came when you looked death in the eye, then I knew Morrie wanted to share it. — Mitch Albom

One hundred and ten years from now no one who is here now will be alive. — Morrie Schwartz.

It's a wedding reception, Morrie, not a fuckin' '80s flashback. — Kristen Ashley

Anyone who loved Tuesdays with Morrie should delight in reading The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Mitch Albom has populated his larger-than-life tale with memorable characters and filled it with the abundant warmth and wisdom that we've come to expect from this gifted storyteller. — John Burnham Schwartz

Now is the time to work on becoming the kind of person you would like to be. — Morrie Schwartz.

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

It's not too late to develop new friendships or reconnect with people. — Morrie Schwartz.

Morrie might 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 own life. I was busy. — Mitch Albom

We think we don't deserve love, we think if we let it in we'll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said. Love is the only rational act. — Morrie Schwartz.

Everything that gets born dies. — Morrie Schwartz.

Morrie," Koppel said, "that was seventy years ago your mother died. The pain still goes on?"
"You bet," Morrie whispered. — Mitch Albom

I dropped my eyes, kneading the dying flesh of his feet between my fingers. For a moment, I felt afraid, as if accepting his words would somehow betray my own father. But when I looked up, I saw Morrie smiling through tears and I knew there was no betrayal in a moment like this. All — Mitch Albom

Money will never make you happy and happy will never make you money. — Morrie Ryskind

I don't know whether the world is full of smart men bluffing or imbeciles who mean it. — Morrie Brickman

Finally, on the fourth of November, when those he loved had left the room just for a moment - to grab coffee in the kitchen, the first time none of them were with him since the coma began - Morrie stopped breathing. — Mitch Albom

You gonna give me shit about goin' out with your brother in blue?" "Gave Merry shit already," Colt returned, and my stomach clutched. "He shoved it back." My stomach unclutched and I beat back a smile. "Not sure which one a' you is more fucked in the head, him for takin' on your shit or you for takin' on his. Just know I'll kick either of your asses, you fuck the other over." "You do know I'm a big girl, Uncle Colt," I shot back. Cal chuckled again. Morrie joined him. Colt started to look testy. Or testier. — Kristen Ashley

With pictures of Patsy, Morrie, and the three — Stephen King

My contention is that as long as you have other faculties-the emotional, psychological, intuitive faculties-you haven't lost yourself or even diminished yourself. Don't be ashamed when you're physically limited or dysfunctional; don't think that you're any less because of your condition. In fact, I feel I am even more myself than I was before I got this illness because I have been able to transcend many of the psychological and emotional limitations I had before I developed ALS. — Morrie Schwartz.

We're Tuesday people, he said. Tuesday people, I repeated. Morrie smiled. — Mitch Albom

The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it — Morrie Schwartz.

Why is it so hard to think about dying? "Because," Morrie continued, "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." 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. — Mitch Albom

Still what I miss most, simple and maybe selfish as it sounds, is the twinkle in Morrie's eyes when I came in the room. But When someone is happy-genuninely happy-to see you, it melts you from the start. It is like going home. — Mitch Albom

My old professor, meanwhile, was stunned by the normalcy of the day around him. Shouldn't the world stop? Don't they know what has happened to me?
But the world did not stop, it took no notice at all

Morrie's doctors guessed he had two years left. Morrie knew it was less.
But my old professor had made a profound decision, one he began to construct the day he came out of the doctor's office with a sword hanging over his head. Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left? he had asked himself.
He would not wither. He would not be ashamed of dying.
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.
Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip. — Mitch Albom

As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed as ignorant as you were at twenty-two, you'd always be 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 the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it. — Morrie Schwartz.

Don't let go too soon, but don't hang on too long. — Morrie Schwartz.

If you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. — Morrie Schwartz.

Grieve and mourn for yourself not once or twice, but again and again. — Morrie Schwartz.

Say, the next time I see you, remind me not to talk to you, will you? — Morrie Ryskind

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 — Mitch Albom

I believe that even though each person has an individual and unique self, the self means nothing outside the context of community or meaningful contact with other people. — Morrie Schwartz.

Build a little community of those you love and who love you — Morrie Schwartz.

I'd always been interested in psychology. — Morrie Schwartz.

There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don't respect the other person, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't know how to compromise, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can't talk openly about what goes on between you, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don't have a common set of values in life, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.' - Morrie Schwartz — Mitch Albom

He mentioned a dear friend Morrie had, Maurie Stein, who had first sent Morrie's aphorisms to the Boston Globe. They had been together at Brandeis since the early sixties. Now Stein was going deaf. Koppel imagined the two men together one day, one unable to speak, the other unable to hear. What would that be like?
"We will hold hands," Morrie said. "And there'll be a lot of love passing between us. Ted, we've had thirty-five years of friendship. You don't need speech or hearing to feel that. — Mitch Albom

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. — Mitch Albom

There was a muffled pop, the sound of a small pumpkin exploding in a microwave oven.
Morris cut the wheel to the left and there was another bump as the Biscayne went back into the parking area. He looked in the mirror and saw that Curtis's head was gone.
Well, no. Not exactly. It was there, but all spread out. Mooshed. No loss of talent in that mess. Morrie thought. — Stephen King

It is 1979, a basketball game in the Brandeis gym. The team is doing well, and the student section begins a chant, "We're number one! We're number one!" Morrie is sitting nearby. He is puzzled by the cheer. At one point, in the midst of "We're number one!" he rises and yells, "What's wrong with being number two?" The students look at him. They stop chanting. He sits down, smiling and triumphant. — Mitch Albom

Ever since I've met you, I've swept you off my feet. — Morrie Ryskind

People often ask what I miss about Morrie. I miss that belief in humanity. I miss the eyes that could view life so encouragingly. And I miss his laugh. I really do. — Mitch Albom

After you have wept and grieved for your physical losses, cherish the functions and the life you have left. — Morrie Schwartz.

As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on - in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here — Morrie Schwartz.

How did you know about the pool?" I asked my mother. "Colt told Morrie, Morrie told Jack, Jack told me," Mom answered. Next time I ran away from home, I was going to a big city. The biggest. In China. Where not only were there billions of people, I didn't speak their language and they had good food. — Kristen Ashley

When you learn to die, you learn to live. — Morrie Schwartz.

So many peoplpe 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 to get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives your purpose and meaning — Morrie Schwartz.

This is how you start to get respect: by offering something that you have. — Morrie Schwartz.

I begin to call Morrie "Coach," the way I used to address my high school track coach. Morrie likes the nickname. "Coach," he says. "All right, I'll be your coach. And you can be my player. You can play all the lovely parts of life that I'm too old for now. — Mitch Albom

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

Everyone knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it ... So we kid ourselves about death ... But there's a better approach. To know you're going to dies, and to be prepared for it at any time ... Do what the Buddhists do ... ask, Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be? — Mitch Albom

We put our values in the wrong things. And it leads to very disillusioned lives. — Morrie Schwartz.

Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others.
— Morrie Schwartz.

Learn how to live and you'll know how to die; learn how to die, and you'll know how to live. — Morrie Schwartz.

All this emphasis on youth - I don't buy it. Listen, I know what a misery being young can be, so don't tell me it's so great. All these kids who came to me with their struggles, their strife, their feelings of inadequacy, their sense that life was miserable, so bad they wanted to kill themselves ... and in addition to all the miseries, the young are not wise. They have very little understanding about life. Who wants to live everyday when you don't know what's going on? When people are manipulating you, telling you to buy this perfume and you'll be beautiful, or this pair of jeans and you'll be sexy - and you believe them! It's such nonsense. — Morrie Schwartz.

Keep your heart open for as long as you can, as wide as you can, for others and especially for yourself. — Morrie Schwartz.

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. In business, people negotiate to win. They negotiate to get what they want. Maybe you're too used to that. Love is different. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else's situation as you are about your own. — Morrie Schwartz.

If you don't have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don't have much at all. — Morrie Schwartz.

Do the kind of things that come from the heart, When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overhelmed with what comes back — Morrie Schwartz.

The elks live up in the hills and in the spring they come down for their annual convention. It is very interesting to watch them come down to the water hole. And you should see them run when they find that it's only a water hole. What they're looking for is elk-ohole. — Morrie Ryskind

On this site we're going to build an Eye and Ear Hospital. This is going to be a sight for sore eyes. — Morrie Ryskind

The best way to deal with that is to live in a fully conscious, compassionate, loving way. Don't wait until you're on your deathbed to recognize that this is the only way to live. — Morrie Schwartz.

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

Acceptance is not a talent you either have or don't have. It's a learned response. My meditation teacher made a great point about the difference between a reaction and a response: You may not have control over your initial reaction to something, but you can decide what your response will be. You don't have to be at the mercy of your emotions, and acceptance can be your first step toward empowerment ... For me, acceptance has been the cornerstone to my having an emotionally healthy response to my illness. — Morrie Schwartz.

Some people suffer in silence louder than others. — Morrie Brickman

The problem, Mitch, is that we don't believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own.
But believe me, when you are dying, you see it is true. We all have the same beginning - birth - and we all have the same end - death. So how different can we be?
Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you.
Morrie Schwartz — Mitch Albom

Morrie talked about his most fearful moments, when he felt his chest locked in heaving surges or when he wasn't sure where his next breath would come from. These horrifying times, he said, and his first emotions were horror, fear, anxiety. But once he recognized the feel of those emotions, their texture, their moisture, the shiver down the back, the quick flash of heat that crosses your brain - then he was able to say, Okay,. This is fear. Step away from it. Step away. — Mitch Albom

Tears are okay

[Morrie Schwartz] — Mitch Albom

Accept yourself, your physical condition and your fate as they are at the present moment. — Morrie Schwartz.

I believe in being fully present," Morrie said. "That means you should be with the person you're with. When I'm talking to you now, Mitch, I try to keep focused only on what is going on between us. I am not thinking about something we said last week. I am not thinking of what's coming up this Friday. I am not thinking about doing another Koppel show, or about what medications I'm taking. I am talking to you. I am thinking about you. — Mitch Albom

We see things not as they are, we see them as WE are. — Morrie Camhi

The little things, I can obey. But 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. — Morrie Schwartz.

Every society has its own problems," Morrie said, lifting his eyebrows, the closest he could come to a shrug. "The way to do it, I think, isn't to run away. You have to work at creating your own culture. — Mitch Albom

We've got a form of brainwashing going on in our country ... . Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that's what we do in this country. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. MORE IS GOOD. MORE IS GOOD. We repeat it
and have it repeated to us
over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what's really important anymore. — Morrie Schwartz.

Okay. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He's enjoying the wind and the fresh air-until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore. "My God, this is terrible," the wave says. "Look what's going to happen to me!"
Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, "Why do you look so sad?"
The first wave says, "You don't understand! We're all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn't it terrible?"
The second wave says, "No, you don't understand. You're not a wave, you're part of the ocean. — Morrie Schwartz.

He would close his eyes and with a blissful smile begin to move to his own sense of rhythm. It wasn't always pretty. But then, he didn't worry about a partner. Morrie danced by himself. — Mitch Albom

A woman's reputation is her worth ... IT is the way it is. You may hate me for saying so, but there is the truth. Do you not remember that this is how our mother died? She would still be here and Father would be well and none of this would ever have happened if she had simply lived according to the time-trusted codes of society.'
Perhaps it proved impossible. Perhaps she could not fit within so tight a corset. Perhaps I am the same.'
One does not have to like the rules, Gemma. But one does need to adhere to them. That is what makes civilization. Do you think I agree with every ... decision made by my superiors — Libba Bray

The real beauty of democracy is that the average man believes he is above average. — Morrie Brickman

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? — Mitch Albom

Devareux also made mention of finding "angel hair" that melted when touched but was so radioactive as to break a Geiger counter, as well as having been shot with lasers coming from the graves in the Jewish Cemetery. As a lapsed Episcopalian, Jasmine might have been vague as to the details of Jewish burials, but felt confident no Goldstein on record had consented to laser turrets atop their dearly departed Uncle Morrie. — Thomm Quackenbush

When you look at it that way, you can see how absurd it is that we individualize ourselves with our fences and hoarded possessions. — Morrie Schwartz.

The tension of opposites:
Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.
A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle. — Morrie Schwartz.

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. — Morrie Schwartz.

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? — Mitch Albom

Once you learn how to diw, you learn how to live — Morrie Schwartz.

My writing circle isn't too full of people who fall into the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought Tuesdays With Morrie" category. — Alissa Nutting

If we can remember the feeling of love we once had, we can die without ever going away. — Morrie Schwartz.

The trouble was, all their eyes came to me when I opened the door and Morrie grinned a my-girl's-gonna-get-herself-some grin. Colt looked like he wanted someone to tear his own fingernails out by the roots. And Cal looked like he was having trouble not busting a gut laughing. — Kristen Ashley

What's wrong with being number two? — Morrie Schwartz.

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. — Mitch Albom

The culture doesn't encourage you to think about such things until you're about to die. We're so wrapped up with egostical 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? — Morrie Schwartz.