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
Topics: Secrets
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
Topics: Balance
Peace is not something you wish for; it’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away!
—Robert Fulghum
Topics: Peace
Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.
—Robert Fulghum
Topics: Inner-child
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
Topics: Success is not everything
Share everything. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Put things back where you found them.
—Robert Fulghum
Topics: Sharing
I’ve always thought anyone can make money. Making a life worth living, that’s the real test.
—Robert Fulghum
Topics: Money
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
To be human is to keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence hollering, What’s it for?
—Robert Fulghum
Topics: Humanity
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
Topics: World
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
Topics: Balance, Living, Wonder
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge—that myth is more potent than history. I believe 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
Topics: History, Life and Living, Grief, Dreams, Belief, Imagination
Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.
—Robert Fulghum
Topics: Listening, Worry, Example
The grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence. 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
Topics: Attitude, Perception
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
Topics: Action, Industry, Busy, Adversity
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Thomas Starr King American Clergyman
- Hosea Ballou American Theologian
- William Laurence Sullivan American Unitarian Clergyman
- James Freeman Clarke American Clergyman
- Edward Everett Hale American Unitarian Clergyman
- Edwin Hubbell Chapin American Preacher, Poet
- Thomas Wentworth Higginson American Reformer, Editor
- Washington Irving American Author
- Ernest Hemingway American Author
- Orson Scott Card American Author
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