Excerpts from The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

"That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind."
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"Strangers," the Blue Man said, "are just family you have yet to come to know."
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Young men go to war, sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to.
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Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices.
Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.
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"We move through places every day that would never have been if not for those who came before us."
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Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them-a mother's approval, a fther's nod-are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that the children understand; their stories, and all thier accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.
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Holding anger is a poision. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.

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Per l'amaro e il dolce? For the bitter and the sweet?
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Love, like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive.
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"Lost love is still love, Eddie. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. We hold it. You dance with it."
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All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time...

On Friendship

Now a stage higher; suppose you want to get to know a human person. If he is determined not to let you, you will not get to know him. You have to win his confidence. In this case the initiative is equally divided-it takes two to make a friendship. -C.S. Lewis (Excerpts from Mere Christianity)

Excerpts from Hope for the Flowers by Trina Paulus

There's a butterfly in each one...
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"I could stand this life hoping in what was ahead until I met you talking to yourself that day. Since then my heart just hasn't been in it--but I don't know what to do."

"I didn't know how badly I felt about this life until then. Now when you look at me so kindly, I know for sure I don't like this life. I just want to do something like crawl with you and nibble grass."

Stripe's heart leapt inside.
Everything looked different.
The pillar made no sense at all.

"I would like that too," he whispered.

But this meant giving up the climb--a hard decision.
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"Butterfly-that word," she thought.
"Tell me, sir, what is a butterfly?"

"It's what you are meant to become. It flies with beautiful wings and joins the earth to heaven. It drinks only nectar from the flowers and carries the seeds of love from one flower to another."

"Without butterflies the world would soon have few flowers."

"It can't be true!" gasped Yellow.
"How can I believe there's a butterfly inside you or me when all I see is a fuzzy worm?"

"How does one become a butterfly?" she asked pensively.

"You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar."

"You mean die?" asked Yellow, remembering the three who fell out of the sky.

"Yes and No," he answered.

"What looks like you will die but what's really you will still live. Life is changed, not taken away. Isn't that different from those who die without ever becoming butterflies?"

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

"Whose affection do you value more, hers or others? The Senor says everything will follow from that."

Narcissus (An Excerpt from The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho)

The Alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus.

The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus.

But this was not how the author of the book ended the story.

He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.

"Why do you weep?" the goddesses asked.
"I weep for Narcissus," the lake replied.
"Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus," they said, "for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand."
"But...was Narcissus beautiful?" the lake asked.
"Who better than you know that?" the goddesses said in wonder. "After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!"

The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said:

"I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected."

"What a lovely story," the alchemist thought.

Excerpts from The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho

The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil in the spoon.
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"Because I don't live in either my past or my future. I'm interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man..."
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"I'm going away," he said. "And I want you to know that I'm coming back. I love you because..."
"Don't say anything," Fatima interrupted. "One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving."
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"This is why alchemy exists," the boy said. "So that everyone will search for his treasure, find it, and then want to be better than he was in his former life. Lead will play its role until the world has no further need for lead; and then lead will have to turn itself into gold.
"That's what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too."