Great Throughts Treasury

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

"Learn to detach...Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent... But detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate fully. That's how you are able to leave it... 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 love 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 can you say, 'All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment."

"Here's what I mean by building your own subculture...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 for yourself. You can't let anyone--or any society--determine those for you."

"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."

"The biggest defect we human beings have is our short-sightedness. We don't see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become."

"Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Don't wait."

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

"You closed your eyes. That was the difference. 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."

"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. Love is so supremely important."

"My friends, if we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere, our embraces tight. We will never wallow in agony of ‘I could have, I should have.’ We can sleep in a storm. And when it’s time, our good-byes will be complete."

"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."

"People say they ‘find’ love,as if it were an object hidden by a rock.But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. what people find then is a certain love.And Eddie found a certain love with Margurate,a grateful love,deep but quite love,one that he knew,above all else ,was irreplaceable.Once she’d gone,he’d let the days go stale.He put his heart to sleep. "

"Love, like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive."

"Without love we all like birds with broken wings. "

"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."

"So, have we solved the secret of happiness? I believe so, he said Are you going to tell me? Yes.Ready? Ready. Be satisfied. That’s it? Be greatful. That’s it? For what you have.For the love you receive.And for what God has given you. That’s it? He looked me in the eye.Then he sighed deeply. That’s it. "

"To think that you died and no one would remember you. I wondered if this was why we tried so hard to make our mark in America. To be known. Think of how important celebrity has become. We sing to get famous; expose our worst secrets to get famous; lose weight, eat bugs, even commit murder to get famous. Our young people post their deepest thoughts on public web sites. They run cameras from their bedrooms. It’s as if we are screaming Notice Me! Remember Me! Yet the notoriety barely lasts. Names quickly blur and in time are forgotten. "

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

"People often belittle the place where they were born but heaven can be found in the most unlikely places. "

"Sacrfice, the captain said. You made one. I made one. We all made them. But you were angry over yours. You kept thinking about what you lost. You didn’t get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to aspire to. "

"If we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love, and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere, our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of ‘I could have, I should have’. We can sleep in a storm. And when its time, our goodbyes will be complete. "

"It’s such a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it."

"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? "

"Sharing tales of those we’ve lost is how we keep from really losing them. "

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

"So many people are in pain – no matter how smart or accomplished – they cry, they yearn, they hurt. But instead of looking down, they look up, which is where I should have been looking, too. Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things: comfort, love, and a peaceful heart."

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

"Kids chase the love that eludes them. "

"Time is not what you think. Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning. "

"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? "

"Every life has one true-love snapshot… For the rest of his life, whenever he thought of Marguerite, Eddie would see that moment, her waving over her shoulder, her dark hair falling over one eye, and he would feel the same arterial burst of love."

"There are five people you meet in heaven. Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth. People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solace is meaningless. This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for."

"How do people choose their final words? Do they realise their gravity? Are they fated to be wise? … As far as [Eddie] could tell, when your time came, it came, and that was that. You might say something smart on your way out, but you might just as easily say something stupid."

"Fairness does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young."

"When you are an outcast, even a tossed stone can be cherished."

"You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on the earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole. It is why we are drawn to babies, and to funerals."

"Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should? It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. The death doesn’t just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed."

"Things that happen before you are born still affect you. And people who come before your time affect you as well. We move through places every day that would never have been if not for those who came before us."

"He was part of your life, part of why you lived and how you lived, part of the story you needed to know."

"Sacrifice. You made one. I made one. We all make them. But you were angry over yours. You kept thinking about what you lost. You didn’t get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It is something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices."

"In the beginning of life, when you are infants, we need others to survive, right? And at the end of life… you need other to survive, right?"

"Through it all, despite it all, Eddie privately adored his old man, because sons will adore their fathers through even the worst behaviour. It is how they learn devotion. Before he can devote himself to God or a woman, a boy will devote himself to his father, even foolishly, even beyond explanation."

"Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them – a mother’s approval, a father’s nod –are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives."

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

"Death doesn’t just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance of being taken and being missed, lives are changed."

"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 can you say, "Alright I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment."

"Love is the only rational act."

"Mom, you’re not listening. / Sweetie, yes I am. / You’re not listening with your eyes."

"Having more does not keep you from wanting more."

"When you are born, you clench your fists tight to grab all you can. When you die your hands are open because you can’t take anything with you."