Quotable Quotes: Tuesdays with Morrie

"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."

"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 your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."

"Maybe death is the great equalizer"

"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in."

"We think we don't deserve love, we think if we let it in we'll become too soft."

"Love is the only rational act."

"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."

"Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live."

"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."

"Learn how to die, and you learn how to live."

"Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent."

"Take any emotion - love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. 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're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then you can say, 'All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment."

"Same with loneliness: you let go, let the tears flow feel it completely - but eventually be able to say, '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."

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

"Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness."

"Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."

"When you're in bed, you're dead."

"I've learned this much about marriage," he said now. You get tested. You find out who you are, who the person is, and how you accommodate or don't."

"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 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."

"Love each other or perish."

"Don't let go too soon, but don't hang on too long."

"Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others."

"Death ends a life, not a relationship."