Great Throughts Treasury

"Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently."

"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 are in the dark. Even when you're falling. "

"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 in 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."

"Don't assume that it's too late to get involved."

"Love wins. Love always wins."

"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."

"As you grow old, 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 than the negative that you're going to die, its also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it."

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

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

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

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

"Death ends a life, not a relationship. "

"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.""

"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."

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

"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."

"What is it about silence that makes people uneasy?"

"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."

"Tears are okay."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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?"

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

"As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become."

"I’m on the last great journey here–and people want me to tell them what to pack."

"Have you found someone to share your heart with?"

"Are you at peace with yourself?"

"Dying, is only one thing to be sad over. Living unhappily is something else. So many of the people who come to visit me are unhappy."

"If you don’t have support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all. Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish."

"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."

"There is no experience like having children. That’s all. There is no substitute for it. If you want to have 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."

"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."

"These were people so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works. You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship."

"Part of the problem, is that everyone in such a hurry, People haven’t found meaning in their lives, so they’re running all the time looking for it. They think the next car, the next house, the next job. They find those things are empty, too, and they keep running."

"If you’re trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And if you’re trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone."

"Make peace. You need to make peace with yourself and everyone around you."

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

"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."

"There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do?"

"'Have I told you about the tension of opposites?' he says. ‘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.' ‘Sounds like a wrestling match’, I say. 'A wrestling match.' He laughs. 'Yes, you could describe life that way.' ‘So which side wins’, I ask? 'Which side wins?' He smiles at me, the crinkled eyes, the crooked teeth. 'Love wins. Love always wins.'"

"Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do; Accept the past as past without denying it or discarding it; Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others; Don?t assume that it?s too late to get involved."

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

"Accept who you are; and revel in it."

"Aging is not just decay, you know. It?s growth. It?s more than the negative that you?re going to die, it?s also the positive that you understand you?re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven?t found meaning. Because if you?ve found meaning in your life, you don?t want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can?t wait until sixty-five."

"Because, 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.Well, the truth is, if you really listen to that bird on your shoulder, if you accept that you can die at any time?then you might not be as ambitious as you are."

"Build a little community of those you love and who love you"

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

"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."