Robert Fulghum Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• Sometimes history knocks at the most ordinary door to see if anyone is home. Sometimes someone is.

  Robert Fulghum

  Home, Doors, Historical

  Robert Fulghum (2011). “Maybe (Maybe Not): Second Thoughts from a Secret Life”, p.226, Ballantine Books

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Christmas, Children, Memories

  7 Copy quote

• Public lives are lived out on the job and in the marketplace, where certain rules, conventions, laws, and social customs keep most of us in line. Private lives are lived out in the presence of family, friends, and neighbors who must be considered and respected even though the rules and proscriptions are looser than what's allowed in public. But in our secret lives, inside our own heads, almost anything goes.

  Robert Fulghum

  Jobs, Law, Secret

  6 Copy quote

• The winding down of summer puts me in a heavy philosophical mood.

  Robert Fulghum

  Summer, Philosophical, Mood

  56 Copy quote

• 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

  Family, Mother, Hands

  9 Copy quote

• You feel like an ant contemplating Chicago.

  Robert Fulghum

  Ants, Chicago, Feels

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Exercise, Power, Mind

  Robert Fulghum (2010). “Uh-Oh: Some Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door”, p.216, Ivy Books

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Dog, Latin, Journey

  9 Copy quote

• It's not that I'm not grateful for all this attention. It's just that fame and fortune ought to add up to more than fame and fortune.

  Robert Fulghum

  Success, Grateful, Add

  4 Copy quote

• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup-they all die. So do we.

  Robert Fulghum

  Death, White, Styrofoam

  Gail Feinstein Forman, Robert Fulghum (1994). “It All Started in Kindergarten: Unforgettable Stories for Listening and Conversation”, Prentice Hall

  6 Copy quote

• Remember, most of us got something for nothing the first time just by showing up here at birth. Now we have to qualify.

  Robert Fulghum

  Showing Up, Firsts, Birth

  Robert Fulghum (2004). “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things”, p.160, Ballantine Books

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Mother, Father, Teaching

  4 Copy quote

• All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School.

  Robert Fulghum

  School, Sunday, Mountain

  Robert Fulghum (1989). “It was on Fire when I Lay Down on it”

  21 Copy quote

• I get tired of hearing it's a crummy world and that people are no damned good. What kind of talk is that? I know a place in Payette, Idaho, where a cook and a waitress and a manager put everything they've got into laying a chicken-fried steak on you.

  Robert Fulghum

  Tired, Idaho, People

  4 Copy quote

• I'd like to speak a foreign language well enough to get the jokes. I'd like to talk with Socrates, and watch Michelangelo sculpt David. I'd like to see the world as it was a million years ago and a million years hence.

  Robert Fulghum

  Time, Years, Watches

  Robert Fulghum (2004). “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things”, p.184, Ballantine Books

  4 Copy quote

• Children are sent to school to be civilized, to learn to be part of the social enterprise.

  Robert Fulghum

  Children, School, Social

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Religious, Work, Dirty

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Lying, Doctors, News

  4 Copy quote

• And good neighbors make a huge difference in the quality of life. I agree.

  Robert Fulghum

  Differences, Quality, Neighbor

  Robert Fulghum (2004). “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things”, p.199, Ballantine Books

  5 Copy quote

• I believe in dancing.

  Robert Fulghum

  Believe, Dancing, I Believe

  4 Copy quote

• To be human is to keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence, hollering, 'What's it for?'

  Robert Fulghum

  Humanity, Cages, Bars

  Robert Fulghum (2004). “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things”, p.261, Ballantine Books

  17 Copy quote

• Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there at the sandpile at Sunday School.

  Robert Fulghum

  Wisdom, School, Sunday

  Robert Fulghum (2004). “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things”, p.10, Ballantine Books

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Sweet, Color, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Distance, Believe, Mean

  Robert Fulghum (2010). “Uh-Oh: Some Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door”, p.173, Ivy Books

  4 Copy quote

• Dreams are more powerful than facts.

  Robert Fulghum

  Hope, Dream, Powerful

  Robert Fulghum (2010). “It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It”, p.8, Ivy Books

  25 Copy quote

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