If Only It Were True

by Marc Levy

“That’s what people do in a civilized world, never mind the risks involved.” As he saw it, giving a dollar to a homeless man outside a supermarket was easy; it cost you nothing. “It’s when you give something that you have very little of, that you truly give. Look, I know that you don’t know much about me, but I’m the kind of person who decides what to do and then does it to the end, no matter what. Do believe me -- the way I believed you.”

it’s while you’re thinking, while you’re weighing the pros and cons, that life goes on. It passes you by while you’re doing nothing. I don’t know how, but we’re going to get you out of this.

“Recognizing happiness when it’s lying at your feet, having the will and the courage to reach down and take it in your arms — and to hold on to it — that’s the heart’s intelligence. Intelligence minus heart is just logic, and that doesn’t amount to much.”

“Sometimes our impulses and desires make us feel powerless. But part of the art of living is knowing how to fight that feeling; because when we’re powerless, we get frightened, and then we lose our grip on our intelligence, our common sense, and we become weak. You’re going to be scared in lots of ways in your life, Arthur. But always fight back, and don’t hesitate for too long. Think, decide, and then act. Don’t have doubts. You have to act on your decisions, or you’ll be unhappy. Every decision you make can become a kind of game that helps you know yourself better, and understand the world.

“Every moment is for ever.” Lauren decided to tell him a story – a game, that would distract him, she said. She told him to imagine he’d won a contest. The prize was that every morning, a bank would open an account in his name containing 86,400 dollars. There were only two rules: “The first rule is that everything you fail to spend is taken from you that night. You can’t cheat, you can’t switch the unspent money to another account: you can only spend it. But when you wake next morning, and every morning after that, the bank opens a new account for you, always eighty-six thousand four hundred dollars, for the day. Rule number two is, the bank can break off the game without warning. It can tell you at any time that it’s over, that it’s closing the account and there won’t be another one. Now, what would you do?” Arthur wasn’t sure he understood. “It’s very simple: every morning when you wake up, they give you eighty-six thousand four hundred dollars, on the sole condition that you spend it in one day. If you don’t spend it all by the time you go to bed, you lose whatever you didn’t spend. But this game—this windfall—can stop at any moment, understand? So my question is, what would you do if you were handed a prize like that?” He didn’t have to think long to answer. He’d spend every dollar on pleasure and on gifts for the people he loved. He’d find a way to use up every cent offered by this magic bank to bring happiness into his life and the lives of everyone around him. “And ...

Courage is about doing what you think is best when the time comes to act, without considering the consequences.”