Keep your heart open for as long as you can, as wide as you can, for others and especially for yourself.
Interpretation
Maintaining an open heart fosters connection with others and self-acceptance.
This quote emphasizes the importance of openness in emotional and relational experiences. By encouraging individuals to keep their hearts open, Morrie Schwartz highlights the ability to connect deeply with others and cultivate self-love, serving as a reminder that vulnerability is a strength that leads to richer, more meaningful interactions in life.
In practice
In a speech about emotional intelligence, the quote can remind the audience of the value of openness.
People are only mean when they're threatened… and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.
The best way to deal with that is to live in a fully conscious, compassionate, loving way. Don't wait until you're on your deathbed to recognize that this is the only way to live.
Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer more than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims....and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? I'm almost......drawn to them.
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
It’s natural to die. The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don’t see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we’re human we’re something above nature.
When you look at it that way, you can see how absurd it is that we individualize ourselves with our fences and hoarded possessions.
I am not a perfectionist, but still I seek perfection. I am not a great romantic, but yet I yearn 4 affection
Veils of love which was only hate petrified by longing--that was me.
Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.
Perfect love is to feeling what perfect white is to color. Many think that white is the absence of color. It is not. It is the inclusion of all color. White is every other color that exists, combined. So, too, is love not the absence of an emotion (hatred, anger, lust, jealousy, covetousness), but the summation of all feeling. It is the sum total. The aggregate amount. The everything.
As I hope_x000D_ _x000D_ For quiet days, fair issue, and long life,_x000D_ _x000D_ With such love as 'tis now, the murkiest den,_x000D_ _x000D_ The most opportune place, the strong'st suggestion_x000D_ _x000D_ Our worser genius can, shall never melt_x000D_ _x000D_ Mine honour into lust, to take away_x000D_ _x000D_ The edge of that day's celebration,_x000D_ _x000D_ When I shall think or Phoebus' steeds are founder'd_x000D_ _x000D_ Or Night kept chain'd below.
If a lover is wretched who invokes kisses of which he knows not the flavor, a thousand times more wretched is he who has had a taste of the flavor and then had it denied him.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.