Great Throughts Treasury

"And when it's time, our good-byes will be complete."

"And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creatures endures. A fear of time running out"

"Another family story is forges, one that father and son will laugh about for decades. This is how a legacy is built. One memory at a time."

"Anyone who tries to write a memoir needs to keep in mind that what's interesting to you isn't necessarily interesting to a reader."

"Are you seeing anyone romantically? he inquired. No, I'm not, she replied. Good. Please keep it that way. Because I intend to ask you to marry me."

"As children grow, they gravitate to their fates."

"As I crossed the street, my sister yelled out the window, ?Do you want us to bring you a cone?? and I thought, You're so stupid, Roberta, cones melt."

"As mankind grew obsessed with its hours, the sorrow of lost time became a permanent hole in the human heart. People fretted over missed chances, over inefficient days; they worried constantly about how long they would live, because counting life?s moments had led, inevitably, to counting them down. Soon, in every nation and in every language, time became the most precious commodity."

"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."

"At that moment I felt lonelier than I'd ever felt before, and that loneliness seemed to squat in my lungs and crush all but my most minimal breathing. There was nothing left to say. Not about this. Not about anything."

"Bad news has no limits. We often feel it should, like a rainstorm that can't possibly get any heavier. But a storm can always worsen, & the burdens of life can too."

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

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

"Because one thing God gave us- and I'm afraid it's at times a little too much- is freewill. Freedom to choose. I believe he gave us everything needed to build a beautiful world, if we choose wisely."

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

"Before I entered the service, all I did was take orders. Next thing I knew, I was giving them. Peacetime was one thing. Got a lot of wise guy recruits. But then the war started and the new men flooded in- young men, like you- and they were all saluting me, wanting me to tell them what to do. I could see the fear in their eyes. They acted as if I knew something about war that was classified. They thought I could keep them alive. You did too, didn't you?' Eddie had to admit he did. The Captain reached back and rubbed his neck. 'I couldn't, of course. I took my orders, too. But if I couldn't keep you alive, I thought I could at least keep you together. In the middle of a big war, you go looking for a small idea to believe in. When you find one, you hold it the way a soldier holds his crucifix when he's praying in a foxhole. For me, that little idea was what I told you guys every day. No one gets left behind."

"Before you measure the years, you measure the days. And before you measure the days, you measure the moon."

"Behind all your stories is always your mother's story. Because hers is where yours begin."

"Being unheard is the ground floor of giving up, and giving up is the ground floor of doing yourself in. It?s not so much, what?s the point? It?s more like, what?s the difference?"

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

"Belief, hard-work, love- you have those things, you can change everything!"

"But a desperate heart will seduce the mind."

"But a man who can take anything will find most things unsatisfying."

"But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins."

"But common sense has not place in first love and never has."

"But fates are connected in ways we don?t understand."

"But Father Time is real. And, in truth, he cannot age. Beneath the unruly beard and cascading hair?signs of life, not death?his body is lean, his skin unwrinkled, immune to the very thing he lords over."

"But heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners. And heaven itself has many steps."

"But hurting ourselves to inflict pain on others is just another cry to be loved."

"But I do know we?re deficient in some way. We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don?t satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted."

"But I realized something as I drove home that night: that I am neither better nor smarter, only luckier. And I should be ashamed of thinking I knew everything, because you can know the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain-no matter how smart or accomplished-they cry, they yearn, they hurt. But instead of looking down on things, 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"

"But love takes many forms, and it is not the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love."

"But man invents nothing God did not create first."

"But my father, a thief in many ways, had robbed me of my concentration."

"But now I gotta pay,' he said. To pay?' For my sin. That's why I'm here, right? Justice?' The Blue Man smiled. 'No, Edward. You are here so I can teach you something. All the people you meet here have one thing to teach you...That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more seperate a breeze from the wind.' ...'It was my stupidity, running out there like that. Why should you have to die on account of me? It ain't fair.' The Blue Man held out his hand. 'Fairness,' he said, 'does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young...Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should? It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed. You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on 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.' ... 'I still don't understand,' Eddie whispered. 'What good came from your death?' You lived,' the Blue Man answered. But we barely knew each other. I might as well have been a stranger.' The Blue Man put his arms on Eddie's shoulders. Eddie felt that warm, melting sensation. Strangers,' the Blue Man said, 'are just family have yet to come to know."

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

"But she wasn?t around, and that?s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone."

"But then she did. She died. No more visits, no more phone calls. And without even realizing it, I began to drift, as if my roots had been pulled, as if I were floating down some side branch of a river."

"But they wanted you. Time is not something you give back. The very next moment may be answer to your prayer. To deny that is to deny the most important part of the future."

"But what if someone from another faith won?t recognize yours? Or wants you dead for it? That is not faith. That is hate. He sighed. And if you ask me, God sits up there and cries when that happens."

"But you grab a moment, or you let it pass."

"By now, the morning sun was just over the horizon and it came at me like a sidearm pitch between the houses of my old neighborhood. I shielded my eyes. This being early October, there were already piles of leaves pushed against the curb?more leaves than I remembered from my autumns here?and less open space in the sky. 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."

"Common sense would have told Sarah to steer clear of Ethan's waters. But common sense has no place in first love and never has."

"Consider the word time. We use so many phrases with it. Pass time. Waste time. Kill time. Lose time. In good time. About time. Take your time. Save time. A long time. Right on time. Out of time. Mind the time. Be on time. Spare time. Keep time. Stall for time. There are as many expressions with time as there are minutes in a day. But once, there was no word for it at all. Because no one was counting. Then Dor began. And everything changed."

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

"Critics have a problem with sentimentality. Readers do not. I write for readers."

"Death: the only true emotion felt in an apathetic world"

"Desire sets our compass, but real life steers our course."

"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."

"Detroit is a place where we?ve had it pretty tough. But there is a generosity here and a well of kindness that goes deep."