The Legacy Letters Quotes

Take off my clothes and there becomes a man. Take off my skin and there becomes my bones. Break all my bones and there becomes my heart. Smash my heart and there becomes my soul. And that you cannot take.

~ Carew Papritz

Only you can know the difference between your wants and your needs, and your sacrifice of your life's time to both.

~ Carew Papritz

Reading teaches us the nuances of humanity. To find the beauty of what is moral and ethical in your own actions and discover the strange subtlety of what it is to question why you should exist.

~ Carew Papritz

Old is old at any age. Old is when you quit asking questions about this, that, and everything. Old is when you forget how to love-or worse, don't care. Old is when you don't want to dance anymore. Old is when you don't want to learn anything new except how to be old. Old is when people tell you that you are old-and you believe them.

~ Carew Papritz

A good man lives for the joy in life and the happiness of being alive, not shackled to the wants of the future or the regrets of the past.

~ Carew Papritz

Start with a brand new good-morning. To your husband or your wife. To your kids. To those you work with - and don't work with. What's the harm? How difficult is it? And it isn't, and you know it. So do it.

~ Carew Papritz

You know there's got to be a better way of life - somewhere, sometime, somehow - but you're not exactly sure what better is.

~ Carew Papritz

Sometimes we make being happy so difficult. And being thankful such a chore.

~ Carew Papritz

Time. Either you are for it or against it. So be here now. Not later.

~ Carew Papritz

I gather the last remnants of the evening’s breeze, so cool and lazy within my arms, feeling it curl up like a small and innocent kitten.

~ Carew Papritz

Spring is a time to make up a big bouquet of flowers for someone you love, or are trying to love, or are in love with.

~ Carew Papritz

No, you become a man when you first decide to put away the things of childhood, the talk of childhood, and the thoughts of childhood. You decide because you cannot be treated as both a man and a boy. Because you are either one or the other, but you are not both . . .

~ Carew Papritz

There's so much to learn. So much to enjoy. So terribly much to be curious about. Take your life and run with it. Make a habit of being alive. This much of anything, I have learned. And am still learning.

~ Carew Papritz

Enjoy what you are learning and doing. This is one of the hardest concepts in the entire world to understand. Harder yet to put into practice.

~ Carew Papritz

No one OWES you a THING. So don’t EXPECT it. You’re on your OWN.

~ Carew Papritz

Make doing your best a habit, and you’ll never know not doing your best.

~ Carew Papritz

Be the greatest of who you were meant to be. Life goes on ferociously-with or without you. It is your choice. Truly and magnificently your choice.

~ Carew Papritz

Your time is your time. Be awake to it. It's hard work to be wisely alive.

~ Carew Papritz

Dream young. Don't settle for old - for to be old is to be superstitious and without curiosity and always questioning your faith. And be ferocious in your dreaming - run like a sun's explosion, and skip across bluing waves, and dance upon tips of swan feathers.

~ Carew Papritz

But more importantly in my book of life, it's what you can't buy with money that is often more important than what you can buy.

~ Carew Papritz

If you don’t know how to grow old, don’t start learning how to grow old.

~ Carew Papritz

Take off my clothes and there becomes a man. Take off my skin and there becomes my bones. Break all my bones and there becomes my heart. Smash my heart and there becomes my soul. And that you cannot take. And what is my soul?...It is everything that make a man. It is everything that makes this man.

~ Carew Papritz

Money may buy you the means to a happiness, but it cannot buy happiness itself.

~ Carew Papritz

Marriage is love put to it's ultimate test - the grindstone of life. Where the idealism of love meets the everydayness of marriage.

~ Carew Papritz

Marriage is not the beginning of the journey, nor the end - it is the journey.

~ Carew Papritz

When do you become a man? When you become your own man. When other men trust you to do a man's work. Trust you with their name, their reputation, their thoughts. Trust you to watch their backs and trust you with their lives.

~ Carew Papritz

HungerYou are only here now, and then you are gone. So be hungry. Hunger toward beauty. Hunger toward love. Hunger towards the unimaginable and unthinkable.

~ Carew Papritz

Sunrise - a time when all truths are still clean and enviable.

~ Carew Papritz

Living isn't always red bows and birthday balloons.

~ Carew Papritz

When do you become a man? Becoming a man means doing the right thing even though it may be hard or difficult. Boys do what is easiest. A man does what is right, whether easy or not.

~ Carew Papritz

While all the universe and my family are still sleeping, I will walk among the red and blue twinkle-lights of the living room, to sit and gaze upon the pretty white angel atop the tree and say silent prayers, remembering what was good in the world and why I was brought here to remember.

~ Carew Papritz

I want to remember...Smelling your newness upon this earth. The baby-Jesus smell as Grandma used to put it. Pure. Unsullied. Like the imagined smell in the twirling air of eiderdown feathers spin-floating around the yard on a new spring day.

~ Carew Papritz

You might want more time in your life to attempt the things you like to do, and not just perform the things you have to do.

~ Carew Papritz

A Good Man. Every night, like a question-and-answer prayer, my son and I recite...What are you going to be? And he says...An honest man. A fair man. A courageous man. And a good man. That's the most important thing, Papa. And my job is finally done. For the night.

~ Carew Papritz

These Moments Cascade Upon One AnotherHere at shepherd's dusk, in a valley without echo, I listen for you. With a frayed longing, I hear your shadow voice whispering within me from far away. I grasp at what is left of this husky sun lying golden upon the upper meadows of lodge pole and bear grass. I gather the last remnants of the evening's breeze, so cool and lazy within my arms, feeling it curl up like a small and innocent kitten. And I see that behind a cloak of clouds, dalliance suits the canting moon. Suddenly I do not wish to lose another moment, And I covet all pristine light.

~ Carew Papritz

I remember once kissing you, your face lit by northern stars. Promising to grow old with you, and now so simply breaking the promise.

~ Carew Papritz

I travel to be replenished with beauty, for travel makes the beauty of this world seem like a Christmas that never ends.

~ Carew Papritz

Respect both what you need to know and what you don't need to know. Respect mystery, for mystery is still needed to run the universe. -- The Legacy Letters, by Carew PapritzThings I didn't know.

~ Carew Papritz

I travel because it makes me realize how much I haven't seen, how much I'm not going to see, and how much I still need to see.- The Legacy Letters, by Carew Papritz

~ Carew Papritz

Starting the DayThe Legacy Letters By Carew PapritzSometimes we make being happy so difficult. And being thankful such a chore. Starting the day like a job we hate. Beginning it like swallowing ten tablespoons of devil-made cough syrup. Because somehow along the way we forget that being alive and healthy and happy are noble goals-or just good ideas. And that the opposite of being alive is being dead. What a choice.

~ Carew Papritz