Fetching wisdom...
Browse the major concepts that shape our lives, like love, courage, and happiness.
“We carry our ancestors within us, their voices in our blood.
“Families are like little countries: they have their own language, their own culture.
“All their women from childhood are accustomed to spinning cotton and weaving cloth.
“We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children.
“Family—it was a knot, a tangle, a net from which one could not escape.
“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away.
“It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting creature.
“A man who has been the undisputed favorite of his mother retains throughout life the triumphant feeling.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
“Our lives were like the Mississippi: always moving, always changing, always carrying debris.
“Women are extraordinary because we carry whole worlds inside us without breaking.
“We believe the one we love cannot be truly lost to us.
“We should not make distinctions between mothers, rich or poor.
“What is a self, if not a story told in a borrowed tongue?
“There is no heaven for me if my sister is not free.
“Women are the keepers of memory.
“Our Tongan heritage is a living river; we must guide its flow for future generations.
“We are all haunted by something we did not choose.
“A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground.
“The breath of the ancestors is in the breath of the living.