Pauljohn Donato > Pauljohn's Quotes

“Fairness," he said, 'does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“No story sits by itself. Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“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

“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.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“All that happens when your dreams come true is a slow, melting realization that it wasn't what you thought.”
― Mitch Albom, For One More Day

“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.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

“the running boy is inside every man, no matter how old he gets.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“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, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

“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.”
― Morrie Schwartz

“Much of what we called "depression" was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures we weren't willing to work for.”
― Mitch Albom, Have a Little Faith: a True Story

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

“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

“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

“Tears are okay”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

“Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“Had he known his death was imminent, he might have gone somewhere else. Instead, he did what we all do. He went about his dull routine as if all the days in the world were still to come.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“The second death. 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.”
― Mitch Albom

“Take one story, viewed from two different angles. It is the same day, the same moment, but one angle ends happily... and the other ends badly.”
― Mitch Albom

“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 everyday that would never have been if not for those who came before us. Our workplaces, where we spend so much time - we often think they began with our arrival. That's not true.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“War could bond men like a magnet, but like a magnet it could repel them, too.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“You need someone to probe you in that direction. It won't just happen automatically."
I knew what he was saying. We all need teachers in our lives.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

“I meant no disrespect. It's just that I had always felt that rabbis, priests, pastors, any cleric, really, lived on a plane between mortal ground and heavenly sky. God up there. Us down here. Them in between.”
― Mitch Albom, Have a Little Faith: a True Story

“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.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“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 that?
"Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

“the word "dying" was not synonymous with "useless.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

“If the only thing wrong with mosques, Lent, chanting, ?Mecca, confession, or reincarnation is that they're not yours- well maybe the problem is "YOU”
― Mitch Albom , Have a Little Faith: a True Story

“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. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father. That’s the thing. Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you’re not really losing it. You’re just passing it on to someone else.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven