Blog post - Quiet Quotations

Top 25 Life lessons from “Tuesdays with Morrie”

24 September 2024 / Pearl

Tuesdays with Morrie is a remarkable memoir by Mitch Albom. It shares many moments between Mitch and his old college Professor, Morrie. Morrie is a simple guy who led an everyday life. His enchanting and endearing personality positively touched everyone around him.

After Morrie learned he was sick, he got to see Mitch again. Mitch was having a tough time as a sports journalist. Their talks were deep & meaningful. Morrie’s thoughts on various aspects on life reflects wisdom earned in living and facing the inevitable ,unpleasant realities of life.

This book offers gentle reminders about what truly matters in the end.

Do we need to wait till the end to give meaning to our existence?

A must read book for its simple and profound life lessons.

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 dark, even when you are falling.

(Tuesdays with Morrie)

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Everybody knows they are going to die but nobody believes it, if we did, we would do things differently.

(Tuesdays with Morrie)

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“If you except that you can die at any time then you might not be as ambitious as you are.”

(Tuesdays with Morrie)

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“If you don’t have the support, love, caring and concern that you get from a family you don’t have much at all.”

(Tuesdays with Morrie)

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“There is no experience like having children, there is no substitute for this.”

(Tuesdays with Morrie)

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“If you want to experience complete responsibility for another

human being and to learn how to love and born in the deepest way then you should have children.”

(Tuesdays with Morrie)

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Its more than negative that you are going to die, it’s also positive that you understand that you are going to die and you live a better life because of it.”

(Tuesdays with Morrie)

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“Money is no substitute for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or fora sense of comradeship.”

(Tuesdays with Morrie)

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“There’s a lot of confusion over what you want versus what you need.”

(Tuesdays with Morrie)

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“It is so important to find a loving relationship specially at a time when you are not doing so well, this is important in everything in life.”

(Tuesdays with Morrie)

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People are only mean when they are threatened.”

(Tuesdays with Morrie)

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“The most incredible feeling is the sensation of accepting what is happening and being in peace. Make peace with living.”

(Tuesday with Morrie)

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“The culture doesn’t encourage you to talk about regrets because we are involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going.”

(Tuesday with Morrie)

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The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love and to let It come in.”

(Tuesdays with Morrie)

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“Detaching oneself from experience by letting the experience penetrate you fully, to be able for you to leave it.”

(Tuesdays with Morrie)

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10 Deep Stoic Lessons from Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning

8 September 2024 / Pearl

Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is a timeless guide for survival. This remarkable book, with its genuine psychiatric insights, offers advice in the face of great suffering. Viktor E. Frankl was a Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School. He founded logotherapy, known as the third Viennese school of psychotherapy.

During World War II, he spent three years in concentration camps, enduring immense mental and physical suffering. He shares the wisdom he gained from these harrowing experiences through the lens of psychiatry, his area of expertise.

Man’s search for meaning:

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.

A person’s freedom to think is something that can never be taken away:

Everything can be taken from man but one thing: the last of human freedoms-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Never downplay someone else’s suffering:

To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behaviour of gas. If a certain quantity of gas pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus, suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore, the size of human suffering is absolutely relative.

Just accept what happens:

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his sufferings or suffer in his place. His Unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

You need to figure out and solve your problems:

Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfil the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

Meaning of life can never be answered in sweeping statements:

Meaning of life differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in general way.

Let your tears flow:

But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest courage, the courage to suffer.

Even your suffering has some meaning in it:

Human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning. And this infinite meaning of life includes suffering, dying, privation and death.

Love that goes beyond the world:

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

Survivors of terrible experiences need counselling to help them recover:

Apart from the moral deformity resulting from the sudden release of mental pressure, there were two other fundamental experiences which threatened to damage the character of liberated prisoner; bitterness and disillusionment when he returns to his former life.

10 profound life lessons from Marcus Aurelius.

3 September 2024 / Pearl

10 profound life lessons from Marcus Aurelius.

Marcus Aurelius,a Roman emperor, is best known for his philosophical work, “Meditations,” which reflect his stoic beliefs and offers profound insights into personal life and leadership. Many of those insights remain relevant today as they were in their own time. From his numerous teachings here are ten profound life lessons that resonates with all human situations.

Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone, those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river. The “what” is in constant flux, the “why” has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what’s right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us, a chasm whose depths we cannot see. So, it would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress. Or any indignation, either. As if things that irritate us lasted.

Not to assume it’s impossible because you find it hard. But to recognise that if it’s humanely possible, you can do it too.

I can control my thoughts as necessary; then how can I be troubled? What is outside my mind means nothing to it. Absorb that lesson and your feet stand firm.

Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? What’s closer to nature’s heart? Can you take a hot bath and leave the firewood as it was? Eat food without transforming it? Can any vital process take place without something being changed? Can’t you see? It”s just the same with you-and just as vital to nature.

To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. You can do it, if you simply recognise that they’re human too, that they act out of ignorance, against their will, and that you’ll both be dead before long. And, above all, that they haven’t really hurt you. They haven’t diminished your ability to choose.

Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions – not outside.

When you run up against someone else’s shamelessness, ask yourself this: “is a world without shamelessness possible? No. Then don’t ask the impossible. There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. The same for someone vicious or untrustworthy, or with any other defect. Remembering that the whole world class has to exist will make you more tolerant of its member.

It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people but care more about their opinion than our own.

If you learn that someone is speaking ill of you, don’t try to defend yourself against the rumours; respond instead with “Yes, and he doesn’t know the half of it, because he could have said more”.

How strangely men act. They will not praise those who are living at the same time and living with themselves; but to be themselves praised by posterity, by those whom they have never seen or ever will see, this set much value on.

10 memorable quotes from Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist” to ponder and reflect on.

25 August 2024 / Pearl

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”

“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.”

“When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.”

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”

“ Everyone seems to have a clear idea how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams.”

“It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

“Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.”

“People need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.”

Book name: The Alchemist

Author: Paulo Coelho

Genre: Fiction/fantasy

First Published in English: 1993