Robert Fulghum quotes
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Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.
-- Robert Fulghum -
If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Life-and-death. Lifedeath. One event. One short event. Don't forget.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Only an open mind still has room for new knowledge. What is outgrown and used up must be discarded to make room for what is yet to be learned. And much of the best thinking is done alone-in deserts, on beaches, in bed, behind closed doors. It is why we say we need to get away-to escape from clutter and busyness-to hear ourselves think.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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Making a living and having a life are not the same thing. Making a living and making a life that's worthwhile are not the same thing. Living the good life and living a good life are not the same thing. A job title doesn't even come close to answering the question. "What do you do?".
-- Robert Fulghum -
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.
-- Robert Fulghum -
We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Ignorance and power and pride are a deadly mixture, you know.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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If I don't have time to live my life well the first time, when am I going to find the time to go back and live it over?
-- Robert Fulghum -
Anything can happen. The great banana peel of existence is always on the floor somewhere.
-- Robert Fulghum -
The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are.
-- Robert Fulghum -
I know what I really want for Christmas. I want my childhood back. Nobody is going to give me that. I might give at least the memory of it to myself if I try. I know it doesn't make sense, but since when is Christmas about sense, anyway? It is about a child, of long ago and far away, and it is about the child of now. In you and me. Waiting behind the door of or hearts for something wonderful to happen. A child who is impractical, unrealistic, simpleminded and terribly vulnerable to joy.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. No, not at all. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be.
-- Robert Fulghum -
My own movement of thought is not meant to be a straight point-to-point, linear line of march, but horizontal exploration from one area of interest to another. There is no ultimate destination - no finish line to cross, no final conclusion to be reached. It's the way I feel about dancing - you move around a lot, not to get somewhere, but to be somewhere in time.
-- Robert Fulghum -
One of the very few reasons I had any respect for my mother when I was thirteen was because she would reach into the sink with her bare hands - bare hands - and pick up that lethal gunk and drop it into the garbage. To top that, I saw her reach into the wet garbage bag and fish around in there looking for a lost teaspoon. Bare hands - a kind of mad courage.
-- Robert Fulghum -
I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have - I can reflect light into the dark places of this world - into the black places in the hearts of men - and change somethings in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found.
-- Robert Fulghum -
One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference.
-- Robert Fulghum -
I believe it is in my nature to dance by virtue of the beat of my heart, the pulse of my blood and the music in my mind.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Wherever and however any one of us may be conceived, it is the same. We come into being in the arms of God.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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Sometimes during the day, I consciously focus on some ordinary object and allow myself a momentary "paying-attention." This paying-attention gives meaning to my life. I don't know who it was, but someone said that careful attention paid to anything is a window into the universe. Pausing to think this way, even for a brief moment, is very important. It gives quality to my day.
-- Robert Fulghum -
For thirty years now, in times of stress and strain, when something has me backed against the wall and I'm ready to do something really stupid with my anger, a sorrowful face appears in my mind and asks... "Problem or inconvenience?" I think of this as the Wollman Test of Reality. Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference.
-- Robert Fulghum -
You feel like an ant contemplating Chicago.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Any fool can make enough money to survive. It's another thing to keep yourself consistently entertained. It's a lot of work, and a lot of fun, to make a life.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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Love is the grand prize and the garbage heap. Love is a spiritual root canal and the only thing that makes life worth living. Love is a little taste of always and a big bite of nothing. And love is everything in between these extremes.
-- Robert Fulghum -
It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a bake-sale to buy a bomber.
-- Robert Fulghum -
And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world it is best to hold hands and stick together.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will break our hearts.
-- Robert Fulghum -
I've always thought anyone can make money. Making a life worth living, that's the real test.
-- Robert Fulghum -
My goal now is to dance all the dances as long as I can, and then to sit down contented after the last elegant tango some sweet night and pass on because there wasn't another dance left in me.
-- Robert Fulghum -
We could learn a lot from crayons; some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others bright, some have weird names, but they all have learned to live together in the same box.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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The winding down of summer puts me in a heavy philosophical mood.
-- Robert Fulghum -
The examined life is no picnic.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Peace is not something you wish for, it's something you make
-- Robert Fulghum -
It’s the spirit here that counts. The time may be long, the vehicle may be strange or unexpected. But if the dream is held close to the heart, and imagination is applied to what there is close at hand, everything is still possible.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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I once listed all the good things I did over the past year, and then turned them into resolution form and backdated them. That was a good feeling
-- Robert Fulghum -
It wasn’t in books. It wasn’t in a church. What I needed to know was out there in the world.
-- Robert Fulghum -
The Sikh gave him the money. When Menon asked for his address so that he could repay the man, the Sikh said that Menon owed the debt to any stranger who came to him in need, as long as he lived. The help came from a stranger and was to be repaid to a stranger.
-- Robert Fulghum -
It doesn’t matter what you say you believe - it only matters what you do.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens.... My grandfather would say we're part of something incredibly wonderful - more marvelous than we imagine. My grandfather would say we ought to go out and look at it once in a while so we don't lose our place in it.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Peace is not something you wish for, � it is something you make, something you are, something you do,�and something you give away.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Life is. I am. Anything might happen. And I believe I may invest my life with meaning. The uncertainty is a blessing in disguise. If I were absolutely certain about all things, I would spend my life in anxious misery, fearful of losing my way. But since everything and anything are always possible, the miraculous is always nearby and wonders shall never, ever cease.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Arguing whether or not a God exists is like fleas arguing whether or not the dog exists. Arguing over the correct name for God is like fleas arguing over the name of the dog. And arguing over whose notion of God is correct is like fleas arguing over who owns the dog.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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Is it always to be a winners-losers world, or can we keep everyone in the game? Do we still have what it takes to find a better way?
-- Robert Fulghum -
The gift was not large as money goes, and my need was not great, but the spirit of the gift is beyond price and leaves me blessed and in debt.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Never forget that music is too important to be left entirely in the hands of professionals.
-- Robert Fulghum -
We are the only creatures that both laugh and weep. I think it's because we are the only creatures that see the difference between the way things are and the way they might be.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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The Indian danced on alone. The crowd clapped up the beat. The Indian danced with a chair. The crowd went crazy. The band faded. The crowd cheered. The Indian held up his hands for silence as if to make a speech. Looking at the band and then the crowd, the Indian said, "Well, what're you waiting for? Let's DANCE.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Share everything. Don't take things that aren't yours. Put things back where you found them.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Liberation, I guess, is everybody getting what they think they want, without knowing the whole truth. Or in other words, liberation finally amounts to being free from things we don't like in order to be enslaved by things we approve of. Here's to the eternal tandem.
-- Robert Fulghum -
I talk about very serious human affairs but with a lightness of heart.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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For all my good intentions, there are days when things go wrong or I fall into old habits. When things are not going well, when I'm grumpy or mad, I'll realize that I've not been paying attention to my soul and I've not been following my best routine.
-- Robert Fulghum -
All of these are names given me by other people, but not names I would have given myself. My name is not mine, it's theirs. It's a series of costumes put on my life by other people.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Even if your watch is full of diamonds the hour is still 60 minutes
-- Robert Fulghum -
Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in a breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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Just when you thought that you already learned the way how to live, life changes - and you're left the same as you begun.
-- Robert Fulghum -
This is an exercise in power - the power of mind over matter. If you don't mind being inadequate, it doesn't matter.
-- Robert Fulghum -
As one old gentleman put it, " Son, I don't care if you're stark nekkid and wear a bone in your nose. If you kin fiddle, you're all right with me. It's the music we make that counts.
-- Robert Fulghum -
And sure, I know if you eat this way you'll die. So? If you don't eat this way you're still going to die. Why not die happy?
-- Robert Fulghum -
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If someone were to ask me whether I believed in God, or saw God, or had a particular relationship with God, I would reply that I don't separate God from my world in my thinking. I feel that God is everywhere. That's why I never feel separated from God or feel I must seek God, any more than a fish in the ocean feels it must seek water. In a sense, God is the "ocean" in which we live.
-- Robert Fulghum -
When my father finally got around to teaching me to drive, he was impressed at my "natural" talent for driving, not knowing that I had already been secretly driving my mother's car around the neighborhood. When I took the test and got my license and my father gave me my own set of keys to the car one night at dinner, it was a major rite of passage for him and my mother. Their perception of me had changed and was formally acknowledged. For me the occasion meant a private sanction to do in public what I had already been doing in secret.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup-they all die. So do we.
-- Robert Fulghum -
One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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You can't always explain everything you do to everybody, you know.
-- Robert Fulghum -
I'm good at doing the laundry. At least that. And it's a religious experience...Water, earth, fire-polarities of wet and dry, hot and cold, dirty and clean. The great cycles-round and round-beginning and end-Alpha and Omega, amen.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Living things have been doing just that for a long, long time. Through every kind of disaster and setback and catastrophe. We are survivors.
-- Robert Fulghum -
You will continue to read stories of crookedness and corruption - of policemen who lie and steal, doctors who reap where they do not sew, politicians on the take. Don't be misled. They are news because they are the exceptions.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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Always trust your fellow man. And always cut the cards. Always trust God. And always build your house on high ground. Always love thy neighbor. And always pick a good neighborhood to live in.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Manuals have their uses ... but they are not to be confused with living.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Instructions For Wayfarers They will declare: Every journey has been taken. You shall respond: I have not been to see myself. They will insist: Everything has been spoken. You shall reply: I have not had my say. They will tell you: Everything has been done. You shall reply: My way is not complete. You are warned: Any way is long, any way is hard. Fear not. You are the gate - you, the gatekeeper. And you shall go through and on . . . —Alexandros Evangelou Xenopouloudakis, THIRD WISH
-- Robert Fulghum -
When my neighbor walks the dogs, he performs a ritual act of sacer simplicitas, to use the church Latin: "sacred simplicity." Walking the dog is in truth a ritual of renewal and revival on an intimate scale - a small rebirth of well-being on a daily basis.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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I and you-We are infinate, rich, large, contradictory, living, breathing miracles-free human beings, children of God and the everlasting universe. That's what we do.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Above all, if what you've done is stupid, but it works, it ain't stupid.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Speed and efficiency do not always increase the quality of life.
-- Robert Fulghum -
There is nothing in your budget for joy. No books, no flowers, no music, not even a cold beer. And there is nothing in your budget to give away to someone else. We don’t help people who don’t have better values than you do.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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Imagination is more important than information. Einstein said that, and he should know. And they come. And they look. And we push. And they fly. We to stay and die on our beds. They to go and die howsoever, yet inspiring those who come after them to find their own edge. And fly.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Why is love easy? I don’t know. And the raccoons don’t say.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well.
-- Robert Fulghum -
But it does no good--solves nothing--to distance myself from the front lines of human need by using the mail as a safe shelter. I believe that serving the best ends of humanity means getting out in the middle of it just as it is, not staying home writing checks and thinking hopeful thoughts. The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are. And you're damned right that's idealistic. No apology. When idealism goes into the trash as junk mail, we're finished.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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Once you know where the roller coaster is going, are you in for the ride?
-- Robert Fulghum -
If you tell people you talk to God, they'll think you're religious, but if you say God talks to you, it's ten to one they'll think you're crazy.
-- Robert Fulghum -
It is the chair in honor of all those who, however competently, embrace the impossible. Sit in that chair someday.
-- Robert Fulghum -
Never, ever regret or apologize for believing that when one man or one woman decides to risk addressing the world with truth, the world may stop what it is doing and hear. There is too much evidence to the contrary.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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The heart will turn to a prune if love is always by the numbers. How will you know if someone really loves you if they only meet your expectations and not your needs?
-- Robert Fulghum -
We even make ourselves up, fusing what we are with what we wish into what we must become. I'm not sure why it must be so, but it is.
-- Robert Fulghum -
If only the scientific experts could come up with something to get it out of our minds. One cup of fixit fizzle that will lift the dirt from our lives, soften our hardness, protect our inner parts, improve our processing, reduce our yellowing and wrinkling, improve our natural color, and make us sweet and good.
-- Robert Fulghum -
A giraffe has a black tongue twenty-seven inches long and no vocal cords. A giraffe has nothing to say. He just goes on giraffing.
-- Robert Fulghum -
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I do not want to know what you will hope for. I want to know what you will work for. I do not want your sympathy for the needs of humanity. I want your muscle. As the wagon driver said when they came to a long, hard hill: ‘Them that’s going on with us, get out and push. Them that ain’t, get out of the way’.
-- Robert Fulghum
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