The collection / 39 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Reset

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

39 results · Page 1 of 2Play this collection ▷

01c. 1937 AD

We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

02c. 1937 AD

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. 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 / quote

↗

03c. 1937 AD

Above all, if what you've done is stupid, but it works, it ain't stupid.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

04c. 1937 AD

If you tell people you talk to God, they'll think you're religious, but if you say God talks to you, it's ten to one they'll think you're crazy.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

05c. 1937 AD

Everything I need to know... I learned in kindergarten.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

06c. 1937 AD

Instructions For WayfarersThey will declare: Every journey has been taken.You shall respond: I have not been to see myself.They will insist: Everything has been spoken.You shall reply: I have not had my say.They will tell you: Everything has been done.You shall reply: My way is not complete.You are warned: Any way is long, any way is hard.Fear not. You are the gate - you, the gatekeeper.And you shall go through and on . . .—Alexandros Evangelou Xenopouloudakis,THIRD WISH

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

07c. 1937 AD

Does the giraffe know what he's for? Or care? Or even think about his place in things? A giraffe has a black tongue twenty-seven inches long and no vocal cords. A giraffe has nothing to say. He just goes on giraffing.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

08c. 1937 AD

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 / quote

↗

09c. 1937 AD

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

10c. 1937 AD

Liberation, I guess, is everybody getting what they think they want, without knowing the whole truth. Or in other words, liberation finally amounts to being free from things we don't like in order to be enslaved by things we approve of. Here's to the eternal tandem.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

11c. 1937 AD

Peace is not something you wish for, it is something you make, something you are, something you do, and something you give away.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

12c. 1937 AD

As one old gentleman put it, " Son, I don't care if you're stark nekkid and wear a bone in your nose. If you kin fiddle, you're all right with me. It's the music we make that counts.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

13c. 1937 AD

Ignorance and power and pride are a deadly mixture, you know.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

14c. 1937 AD

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 / quote

↗

15c. 1937 AD

Until you have experienced raccoons mating underneath your bedroom at three in the morning, you have missed one of life's sensational moments.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

16c. 1937 AD

Always trust your fellow man. And always cut the cards. Always trust God. And always build your house on high ground. Always love thy neighbor. And always pick a good neighborhood to live in.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

17c. 1937 AD

Pardon me, but my father says that it is a lie that Americans have everything. You have no sheep, no goats, no trees, no oil, no vines, no wine, not even chickens. He asks, 'What kind of life is that?' He says, 'No wonder you don't sing or dance or recite poetry very often.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

18c. 1937 AD

It's just this: that there are places we all come from-deep-rooty-common places- that makes us who we are. And we disdain them or treat them lightly at our peril. We turn our backs on them at the risk of self-contempt. There is a sense in which we need to go home again-and can go home again. Not to recover home, no. But to sanctify memory.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

19c. 1937 AD

And sure, I know if you eat this way you'll die. So? If you don't eat this way you're still going to die. Why not die happy?

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

20c. 1937 AD

Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts...

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

21c. 1937 AD

The gift was not large as money goes, and my need was not great, but the spirit of the gift is beyond price and leaves me blessed and in debt.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

22c. 1937 AD

One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference.

Robert Fulghum / quote

↗

23c. 1937 AD

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 / quote

↗

24c. 1937 AD

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 / quote

↗