The Book of Charlie Quotes

“later, he put such questions before us. If all the trappings were stripped away, leaving only my true self, who would I be? Am I living fully as that self in every moment? And when it ends, will my story have meaning”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“What Marcus Aurelius understood is that all of us are slaves in certain respects, even the emperor of Rome. We are slaves to time and chance; we are indentured to fate. “Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own,” he wrote in his Meditations. In another gem, he observed that “it never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“The lesson, so simple yet so difficult, is that life can be savored even though it contains hardship, disappointment, loss, and even brutality. The choice to see its beauty is available to us at every moment.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“Charlie made an art of living. He understood, as great artists do, that every life is a mixture of comedy and tragedy, joy and sorrow, daring and fear. We choose the tenor of our lives from those clashing notes.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“It’s natural to look at a goal and think… it might not be attainable. The trick is to ignore the “not.” Charlie had a gift for ignoring.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“We must forget past failures,” he advised in one of his sermons, “for many times we forget the things of today in lamenting the failures of the past.… Some men regret the last rays of the setting sun, while others look toward the east for the first light of dawn.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“Charlie made an art of living. He understood, as great artists do, that every life is a mixture of comedy and tragedy, joy and sorrow, daring and fear. We choose the tenor of our lives from those clashing notes. Even when Charlie’s strength was fading, when the golf course had become an obstacle course, when the infirmity of encroaching time could no longer be denied, he chose to turn his wedge into a walking stick and to carry it with panache.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“What is to give light must endure burning - Viktor Frankl”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man

“Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. -Harry S. Truman”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man

“If you're negative, your whole body suffers. A negative person falls apart became the food that is supplied with optimism is not present.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man

“Make and keep friends, tell loved ones how you feel, forgive and seek forgiveness. Feel deeply, observe miracles, make them happen.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man

“To hold securely to the well-formed purposes of your own will, you must let go of the vain idea that you can control people or events or the tides of fate. You can’t change what was, nor entirely control what will be. But you can choose who you are and what you stand for and what you will try to accomplish.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“As a member of the Clarinda Chautauqua committee, Rev. White helped to select lecturers, acting troupes, musicians, and public figures from among the hundreds of performers who plied the Chautauqua trail. The Great Commoner, politician William Jennings Bryan, logged countless miles traveling from one campground to the next, touting his platform of fiscal and spiritual reform. Temple University founder Russell Conwell delivered his motivational speech “Acres of Diamonds” more than six thousand times over some forty years.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“Life unfolds by accident, despite our hopes and plans. We can’t unwish the accidents without wishing away our lives.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“every situation is uncertain. Even at our most confident or complacent, we control only our own choices. We never know what lies ahead to challenge, confound, or even cripple us. Not”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“As dark as things seem in the 2020s, they aren’t any darker than the 1920s.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“Technology changes, but people don’t. The human touch will always matter.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“Remember in every profession as in every life: There is a high road and a low road, and some will take the high road and some will take the low road, and in between, in the misty flaps the rest drift to and fro.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own,” he wrote in his Meditations. In another gem, he observed that “it never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“Frankl concluded that “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” of meeting whatever life presents.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“The Stoics taught that a life well lived requires a deep understanding of what we control, and—more difficult—all that lies beyond our control. We determine nothing but our own actions and reactions. Our willful choices. A true education, Epictetus taught, consists of learning “to distinguish that among things, some are in our power but others are not; in our power, are will and all acts that depend on the will. Things not in our power are the body, the parts of the body, possessions, parents, brothers, children, country, and generally all with whom we live in society.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“I had grown tired of people arguing with each other, which is the principal pastime of the nation’s capital.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?” His father replies, “That is the only time a man can be brave.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“what is to give light must endure burning.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“Life is complicated. The solution is simple. Do the right thing.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man

“Stoicism spoke to Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist who survived the Nazi slave labor camps as a prisoner at Dachau. From his observation of exemplary prisoners who maintained their dignity and goodwill even in those hellish circumstances, Frankl concluded that “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” of meeting whatever life presents. This same philosophy has spoken to generations of alcoholics seeking to be free of an enslaving addiction. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” their prayer goes, “courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“The Stoics taught that a life well lived requires a deep understanding of what we control, and—more difficult—all that lies beyond our control. We determine nothing but our own actions and reactions. Our willful choices. A true education, Epictetus taught, consists of learning “to distinguish that among things, some are in our power but others are not; in our power, are will and all acts that depend on the will. Things not in our power are the body, the parts of the body, possessions, parents, brothers, children, country, and generally all with whom we live in society.” For”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“Just do the right thing.” The simplicity is so removed from my own generation of helicopter parents.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“If you’re negative, your whole body suffers. A negative person falls apart, because the food that is supplied with optimism is not present.” An optimist does not deny darkness. Optimists like Charlie refuse to sink into it, to hide in it, to surrender to darkness.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie

“In the grip of depression or anxiety, any affirmative step is better than paralysis. Action promotes more action; decision produces decision; living generates life.”
― David von Drehle, The Book of Charlie