I traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck, and I never even realized I was doing it.

I made the wrong choice ," I whispered. My mother shook her head. "A child should never have to choose.

"You marked the minutes," the old man said. "But did you use them wisely? To be still? To cherish? To be grateful? To lift and be lifted?"

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

This is how you start to get respect, by offering something that you have.

There is a time for hello and a time for good-bye. It's why the act of burying thing seems natural, but the act of digging them up does not.

The problem, Mitch, is that we don't believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own. But believe me, when you are dying, you see it is true. We all have the same beginning - birth - and we all have the same end - death. So how different can we be? Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you. Morrie Schwartz