Leo Buscaglia

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.

What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life.

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.

If I don't have wisdom, I can teach you only ignorance.

My mother made soft polenta often, and as a child, I would watch her stir until she looked like her arm would fall off.

I was lucky to have such a loving, crazy family. I learned to give and share.

The best students come from homes where education is revered: where there are books, and children see their parents reading them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If we wish to free ourselves from enslavement, we must choose freedom and the responsibility this entails.