If you're an advocate of gentleness, you're simplistic and naive. If you're an advocate of despair and hate, you're sophisticated.
— Leo Buscaglia
The best students come from homes where education is revered: where there are books, and children see their parents reading them.
I got the copyright for love!
All of my youth growing up in my Italian family was focused around the table. That's where I learned about love.
When we sit at the table, there is more going on than satisfying hunger. It is sad to think of those who eat simply to satisfy their hunger and who do not permit themselves to linger under the many spells offered by a good meal - the satisfaction of our hearts, our minds and our spirits.
I've learned that you learn best by modeling. If you want people to learn, do it!
I am a teacher. And I think I am a serious one who happens to be enjoying life.
A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world.
Love always creates, it never destroys. In this lies man's only promise.
If we wish to free ourselves from enslavement, we must choose freedom and the responsibility this entails.
We all need each other.
Love is always open arms. If you close your arms about love you will find that you are left holding only yourself.
Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.
The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another's, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises.
Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized.
Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.
I've spoken in every state in the union, meeting and hugging the people who later bought my books. I spoke to anybody who wanted to hear me, including 1,000 nuns who could pay me only with homemade bread.
The minute we stop learning, we begin death, the process of dying. We learn from each other with every action we perform. We are teaching goodness or evil every time we step out of the house and into the street.
Food is celebratory. People who don't cook don't know how much fun they're missing.
The way to anybody's heart is through a thoughtfully-prepared, beautifully-executed, lovingly-presented meal.
The purpose of life is to help others, and if you can't help them, won't you at least not hurt them? I know that is a platitude, that that is sentimental and can easily be attacked. But loving, caring is simple, and we make it complex. Our own neuroses make it complex.
I have too much respect for people to try to control them. But they are estranged from love, afraid to reach out and touch one another. We're afraid to appear sentimental or speak in platitudes because people will say, 'What a jerk!' It takes courage in our culture to be a lover.
Hugs make you feel psychologically more secure and together.
Don't smother each other. No one can grow in the shade.
If I don't have wisdom, I can teach you only ignorance.
We are no longer puppets being manipulated by outside powerful forces: we become the powerful force ourselves.
I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate - it's apathy. It's not giving a damn.
Love is always bestowed as a gift - freely, willingly and without expectation. We don't love to be loved; we love to love.
It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.
Change is the end result of all true learning.
I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things... I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind.
Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.
Biologically and physiologically, we are not equal. Some of us learn better at different times of day. Some learn best visually, some auditorially, some tactilely, by touching.
I have been a teacher myself all my life. I have an intense passion to share with people. Our only salvation is in knowledge, in learning.
We want to gently remind people that we don't have forever. In my work, I hear parents complain all the time that their children grow up so fast. But they don't take the time to sit down and talk to each other. The last bastion of getting together is around the table.
My mother made soft polenta often, and as a child, I would watch her stir until she looked like her arm would fall off.
You can be a follower of Muhammad or Jesus or Buddha or whomever. Always, they said that the most essential factor is to love your neighbor. And to love you.
I was lucky to have such a loving, crazy family. I learned to give and share.
What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life.
What love we've given, we'll have forever. What love we fail to give, will be lost for all eternity.
The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don't let them put you in that position.
I believe that you control your destiny, that you can be what you want to be. You can also stop and say, 'No, I won't do it, I won't behave his way anymore. I'm lonely and I need people around me, maybe I have to change my methods of behaving,' and then you do it.
Don't brood. Get on with living and loving. You don't have forever.
Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations.
Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.
I've always thought that people need to feel good about themselves and I see my role as offering support to them, to provide some light along the way.
Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time... It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other.
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
