Azimeh > Azimeh's Quotes

“The mature man lives quietly, does good privately, takes responsibility for his actions, treats others with friendliness and courtesy, finds mischief boring and avoids it. Without the hidden conspiracy of goodwill, society would not endure an hour.”
― kenneth rexroth

“I write for one and only one purpose, to overcome the invincible ignorance of the traduced heart. […] I wish to speak to and for those who have had enough of the Social Lie, the Economics of Mass Murder, the Sexual Hoax, and the Domestication of Conspicuous Consumption.”
― Kenneth Rexroth

“Loneliness"

To think of you surcharged with
Loneliness. To hear your voice
Over the record say,
“Loneliness.” The word, the voice,
So full of it, and I, with
You away, so lost in it -
Lost in loneliness and pain.
Black and unendurable,
Thinking of you with every
Corpuscle of my flesh, in
Every instant of night
And day. O, my love, the times
We have forgotten love, and
Sat lonely beside each other.
We have eaten together,
Lonely behind our plates, we
Have hidden behind children,
We have slept together in
A lonely bed. Now my heart
Turns towards you, awake at last,
Penitent, lost in the last
Loneliness. Speak to me. Talk
To me. Break the black silence.
Speak of a tree full of leaves,
Of a flying bird, the new
Moon in the sunset, a poem,
A book, a person – all the
Casual healing speech
Of your resonant, quiet voice.
The word freedom. The word peace.”
― Kenneth Rexroth, Collected Shorter Poems

“The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.”
― H.L. Mencken

“I am suspicious of all the things that the average people believes.”
― H.L. Mencken

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Little Book In C Major

“modern times, of course, political ideologies have taken over the numinous function, with the face of the leader multiplied on a thousand banners.”
― Erik H. Erikson, The Life Cycle Completed (Extended Version): A Review

“La raison qui m’a conduit à proférer de la poésie (shi‘r) est que j’ai vu en songe un ange qui m’apportait un morceau de lumière blanche ; on eût dit qu’il provenait du soleil. « Qu’est-ce que cela ? », Demandai-je. « C’est la sourate al-shu‘arâ (Les Poètes) » me fut-il répondu. Je l’avalai et je sentis un cheveu (sha‘ra) qui remontait de ma poitrine à ma gorge, puis à ma bouche. C’était un animal avec une tête, une langue, des yeux et des lèvres. Il s’étendit jusqu’à ce que sa tête atteigne les deux horizons, celui d’Orient et celui d’Occident. Puis il se contracta et revint dans ma poitrine ; je sus alors que ma parole atteindrait l’Orient et l’Occident. Quand je revins à moi, je déclamai des vers qui ne procédaient d’aucune réflexion ni d’aucune intellection. Depuis lors cette inspiration n’a jamais cessé.”
― Ibn Arabi

“To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. It is not safe. I had learnt to use my fears as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks, and”
― Robyn Davidson, Tracks

“The road to India, the Suez Canal, the oil fields of Mosul, the whole complex of political and strategic requirements that drew Britain into Palestine in 1918, began with the enterprise of the Elizabethan merchant adventurers.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour

“The author of IRR, who worshipped the King, said he had the valor of Hector, the magnanimity of Achilles, the liberality of Titus, the eloquence of Nestor, and the prudence of Ulysses; that he was the equal of Alexander and not inferior to Roland. But later historians tend to picture him rather as a remorseless, kindless villain. He was probably not a pleasant or a lovable character; none of the Plantagenets were. But a great soldier and a great commander he certainly was. He possessed that one quality without which nothing else in a commander counts: the determination to win. To this everything else—mercy, moderation, tact—was sacrificed. The avarice that so horrifies his critics was not simple greed: it was a quartermaster’s greed for his army. His massacre of the prisoners was not simple cruelty, but a deliberate reminder to Saladin to keep faith with the terms agreed to, which that great opponent understood and respected.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour

“In writing I am seduced by the sound of words and by the interaction of their sound and sense.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, Practicing History: Selected Essays

“It must always be an amazement how 18th century letter writers - even, and especially, officials - had the time and capacity to produce their sculpted sentences and perfection of grammar and mots justes, while 20th century successors can only envy the past and leave their readers painfully to pick their way through thickets of academic and the mud of bureaucratic jargon.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute : View of the American Revolution

“نعم، في كل خطوة في الحياة نصادف إحباطاً و خيبة و إهانة. فكيف لا تصبح شخصيتنا ممزقة؟ و كيف لا نشعر بهويتنا مهددة؟ كيف لا نشعر بأننا نعيش في عالم يمتلكه الآخرون و يخضع لقواعد يمليها الآخرون.”
― أمين معلوف, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong

“السلطات المستبدة التي تحارب الإسلاميين ليست بأفضل منها في نظري، و إني أرفض تأييد الابتزاز الذي يرتكبونه بذريعة أنه أهون الشّرين. هذه الشعوب تستحق أفضل من أهون الشرين، و أفضل من «السبيل الوحيد» فهي تحتاج إلى حلول حقيقية لا يمكن أن تكون غير الديمقراطية الحقيقية و الحداثة الحقيقية.”
― أمين معلوف, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong

“The great discovery of psychoanalysis was that of the production of desire, of the production of the unconscious. But once Oedipus entered the picture, the discovery was soon buried beneath the new brand of idealism: a classical theater was substituted for the unconscious as a factory: representation was substituted for the units of production of the unconscious; and an unconscious that was capable of nothing but expressing itself – in myth, tragedy, dreams – was substituted for the productive unconscious”
― Gilles Deleuze, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

“In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. We speak in sentences that end before finishing. We sleep heavily because we need to ask so many questions as we dream alone. We bump into others and feel bashful at recognizing souls so similar to ourselves.”
― Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

“il filosofo è tanto più bestia quanto più vuol esser dio”
― Johann Gottfried Herder, Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political Writings

“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood.

Daniel H. Burnham”
― Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

“The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up.”
― E.B. White, The Elements of Style

“كيف يمكن ألا يستطيع الإنسان أن يسير إلى ملكه الخاص؟ أن يزور قبر زوجته؟ أن يأكل ثمار أربعين جيلاً من كدح أسلافه من دون أن يعاقب بالموت رمياً بالرصاص؟ على نحو ما، لم يكن هذا السؤال الفجّ القاسي قد نفذ سابقاً إلي وعي اللاجئين الذين شوشتهم أبدية الانتظار، معلقين آمالهم على قرارات دولية نظرية”
― Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin

“The pain of grief is just as much a part of life as the joy of love; it is, perhaps, the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment.”
― Colin Murray Parkes

“لو أنني أقول للبحر ما اشعر به نحوك
لترك شواطئه و أصدافه و أسماكه و تبعني!”
― نزار قباني

“The morning glories and the sunflowers turn naturally toward the light, but we have to be taught, it seems.”
― Richard Rohr

“Mujāhada, a collateral form of jihād (the so-called "holy war"), taken [by Sufis] to mean "earnest striving after the mystical life." The term is based on the Koranic text, "And they that strive earnestly in Our cause, them We surely guide upon Our paths." A Tradition makes the Prophet rank the "greater warfare" (al jihad al-akbar) above the "lesser warfare" (al jihad al-asghar, i.e., the war against infidelity), and explain the "greater warfare" as meaning "earnest striving with the carnal soul" (mujāhadat al-nafs).”
― A.J. Arberry, Sufism: An Account of the Mystics of Islam

“تا چه مایه اندوهناک و دشوار می تواند باشد عالم وقتی تو هیچ بهانه ای برای حضور در ان نداشته باشی”
― محمود دولت آبادی / Mahmoud Dolat Abadi, سُلوک

“برخی افراد از حالت من دچار تعجب می‌شوند و می‌پرسند "تو چه کم داری؟" و اشاره‌شان مثلاً به توفیق‌های هنری-ادبی، و احمقانه این‌که اشاره‌شان به حُسن شهرت من است؛ و من از این پرسش آن‌ها دچار تعجب می‌شوم که فکر می‌کنند انسان در حالتی حق دارد دچار باشد که شخصاً چیزی کم داشته باشد! غافل از این‌که یکی از علل اساسی چنین حالتی در من این است که حس می‌کنم و می‌بینم تک به تک مردم، هرکس فقط به مشکل خودش و راه‌حل فردی مشکل خودش فکر می‌کند؛ و لابد نمی‌داند که فاجعهٔ اجتماعی از همین ناشی می‌شود که هر کس فکر می‌کند باید گوش و گلیم خود را از آب به‌در کشد. چه انبوه‌اند مشکلات زندگی ما، و چه اندک‌اند کسانی که آن‌را مشکل خود بدانند.”
― محمود دولت‌آبادی, نون نوشتن

“اندیشیدن را جدّی بگیریم. اندیشیدن . آن‌چه که ما کم داریم، مردان و زنانی هستند که اندیشیدن را جدی گرفته باشند. اندیشیدن باید به مثابه یک کار مهم تلقی بشود. اندیشه ورزیدن. بند زبان را ببندیم و بال اندیشه را بگشاییم. نویسنده نباید فقط در بند گفتن باشد. برای گفتن همیشه وقت هست، اما برای اندیشیدن ممکن است دیر بشود. چرا یک نویسنده نباید مغز خود را برای اندیشیدن و برای تخیل تربیت کند؟”
― محمود دولت‌آبادی, نون نوشتن

“Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all.”
― Guy de Maupassant