Mitch Albom · 249 pages
Rating: (66.1K votes)
“Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“Nothing haunts us like the things we don't say.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“The secret to happiness...be satisfied and be grateful.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“I think people expect too much from marriage today,' he said. 'They expect perfection. Every moment should be bliss. That's TV or movies. But that is not the human experience.
. . . twenty good minutes here, forty good minutes there, it adds up to something beautiful. The trick is when things aren't so great, you don't junk the whole thing. It's okay to have an argument. It's okay that the other one nudges you a little, bothers you a little. It's part of being close to someone.
But the joy you get from that same closeness--when you watch your children, when you wake up and smile at each other--that . . . is a blessing. People forget that.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“When a baby comes into the world, its hands are clenched, right? Like this?" He made a fist. "Why? Because a baby not knowing any better, wants to grab everything, to say the whole world is mine. But when an old person dies, how does he do so? With his hands open. Why? Because he has learned his lesson." "What lesson?" I asked. He stretched open his empty fingers. "We can take nothing with us.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“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.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“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.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“I am in love with Hope.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“You knew me. You knew that person, but you don't know the person I'm trying to become... You are not your past!”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“The story of my recent life.' I like that phrase. It makes more sense than 'the story of my life', because we get so many lives between birth and death. A life to be a child. A life to come of age. A life to wander, to settle, to fall in love, to parent, to test our promise, to realize our mortality- and in some lucky cases, to do something after that realization.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“A little girl came home from school with a drawing she'd made in class.She danced into the kitchen ,where her mother was preparing dinner.
"Mom,guess what ?" she squealed waving the drawing .
her mother never looked up.
"what"? she said ,tending to the pots.
"guess what?" the child repeated ,waving the drawings.
"what?" the mother said , tending to the plates.
"Mom, you're not listening"
"sweetie,yes I am"
"Mom" the child said "you're not listening with your EYES”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“God sings, we hum along, and there are many melodies, but it's all one song - one same, wonderful, human song.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“If you could pack for heaven, this was how you'd do it, touching everything, taking nothing.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“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, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“Look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that I must differ. No matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something they can’t explain, something that created it all at the end of the search.
“And no matter how far they try to go the other way – to extend life, play around with the genes, clone this, clone that, live to one hundred and fifty – at some point, life is over. And then what happens? When the life comes to an end?”
I shrugged.
“You see?”
He leaned back. He smiled.
“When you come to the end, that’s where God begins.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“Having more does not keep you from wanting more. And if you always want more - to be richer, more beautiful, more well known - you are missing the bigger picture, and I can tell you from experience, happiness will never come”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“You should be convinced of the authenticity of what you have, but you must also be humble enough to say that we dont know everything. And since we dont know everything, we must accept that another person may believe something else.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“You can touch everything and be connected to nothing.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“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.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“Adam hid in the Garden of Eden. Moses tried to substitute his brother. Jonah jumped a boat and was swallowed by a whale...Man likes to run from God. It's a tradition.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“Getting old we can deal with. Being old is the problem”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“And if you don´t commit? I asked. Your choice. But you miss what´s on the other side. What´s on the other side? "Ah" he smiled. "A happiness you cannot find alone”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“I think people expect too much from marriage today" he said. "They expect perfection. Every moment should be a bliss. That´s TV or movies. But that is not the human experience. Like Sarah says, twenty good minutes here, forty good minutes there, it adds up to something beautiful. The trick is when things aren´t so great, you don´t junk the whole thing. It´s okay to have an argument. It´s okay that the other one nudges you a little, bothers you a little. It´s part of being close to someone. But the joy you get from the sam closeness - when you watch your children, whan you wake up and smile at each other - that, as our tradition teaches us, is a blessing. People forget that. Why do they forget it? Because the word "commitment" has lost its meaning. I´m old enough to remember when it used to be positive. A committed person was someone to be admired. He was loyal and steady. Now a commitment is something you avoid. You don´t want to tie yourself down”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“No. You can't work your way into heaven. Anytime you try and justify yourself with works, you disqualify yourself with works. What I do here, every day, for the rest of my life, is only my way of saying, 'Lord, regardless of what eternity holds for me, let me give something back to you. I know it doesn't even no scorecard. But let me make something of my life before I go.. and then, Lord, I'm at your mercy.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways" from the book of Isaiah”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“To these people, unhappiness was a condition, an intolerable state of affairs. If pills could help, pills were taken. But pills were not going to change the fundamental problem in the construction. Wanting what you can´t have. Looking for self-worth in the mirror. Layering work on top of work and still wondering why you weren´t satisfied - before working some more.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself..”
― Mitch Albom, quote from Have a Little Faith: a True Story
“[…] alla fin fine, bisogna saper apprezzare i vantaggi che si traggono dalle proprie origini.”
― Czesław Miłosz, quote from Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition
“[T]he mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, quote from The Social Contract
“My father was taking me as seriously as the Ringolds were, but not with Ira’s political fearlessness, with Murray’s literary ingenuity, above all, with their seeming absence of concern for my decorum, for whether I would or would not be a good boy. The Ringolds were the one-two punch promising to initiate me into the big show, into my beginning to understand what it takes to be a man on the larger scale. The Ringolds compelled me to respond at a level of rigor that felt appropriate to who I now was. Be a good boy wasn’t the issue with them. The sole issue was my convictions. But then, their responsibility wasn’t a father’s, which is to steer his son away from the pitfalls. The father has to worry about the pitfalls in a way the teacher doesn’t. He has to worry about his son’s conduct, he has to worry about socializing his little Tom Paine. But once little Tom Paine has been let into the company of men and the father is still educating him as a boy, the father is finished. Sure, he’s worrying about the pitfalls—if he wasn’t, it would be wrong. But he’s finished anyway. Little Tom Paine has no choice but to write him off, to betray the father and go boldly forth to step straight into life’s very first pit. And then, all on his own—providing real unity to his existence—to step from pit to pit for the rest of his days, until the grave, which, if it has nothing else to recommend it, is at least the last pit into which one can fall.”
― Philip Roth, quote from I Married a Communist
“We have to defend views we don't share and impose them on the public; deal with questions we don't understand and vulgarize them for the gallery. We can't have ideas of our own, we have to have those of the editor; and even the editor doesn't have the right to think with his own head, because when he's sent for by the board of directors he has to stifle his own views, if he has any, and support those of the shareholders.”
― Pitigrilli, quote from Cocaine
“Methinks marriage has made my brother soft,” Alaric replied. “ ’Tis a shame when a puny lass has to save his arse.”
― Maya Banks, quote from Never Love a Highlander
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