Shmesa > Shmesa's Quotes

“There is a simple realization from which all personal improvement and growth emerges. This is the realization that we, individually, are responsible for everything in our lives, no matter the external circumstances. We don’t always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond. Whether we consciously recognize it or not, we are always responsible for our experiences. It’s impossible not to be. Choosing to not consciously interpret events in our lives is still an interpretation of the events of our lives. Choosing”
― Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

“يموت الحي شيئاً فشيئا؛ وحين لا يبقى فيه ما يموت، يُقال: مات”
― مصطفى صادق الرافعي, كلمة وكليمة

“ينظر الحب دائماً بعينٍ واحدة؛ فيرى جانباً ويعمى عن جانب، ولا ينظر بعينيه معاً إلا حين يريد أن يتبين طريقه لينصرف”
― مصطفى صادق الرافعي, كلمة وكليمة

“لا تتم فائدة الانتقال من بلد الى بلد الا اذا انتقلت النفس من شعور الى شعور
فاذا سافر معك الهم ف انت مقيم لم تبرح .”
― مصطفى صادق الرافعي

“I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories... water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

“It began to occur to me that the whole story of love might be nothing more than a wicked lie; that simply sleeping beside another body night after night gives no express right of entry to the interior world of their thoughts or dreams;that we are separate in the end whatever contrary illusions we may cherish; and that this miserable truth might as well be faced, since it will be dinned into one, like it or not by the failings of those we hold dear. I wasn't so bitter now. I'd begun to emerge into a sense of satisfaction with my not, but it would be a long time before I trusted someone, for I'd seen how essentially unknowable even the best loved might prove to be.”
― Olivia Laing, To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface

“فقال: أنا ذاهب، ولن أعود للقصر، فما رأيك أن تأتي معي؟، فقال الملك: مستحيل طبعًا أن أترك القصر، ما هذا الطلب الغريب؟، فردَّ عليه الزاهد: هذا هو الفرق بيني وبينك، أنا لا أمانع في أن أسكن تحت شجرة، أو أن أسكن في قصر، ففي كل حال من الأحوال نعمة من الله عليَّ أراها، والآن أنا لا أمانع في ترك القصر، أنا كنت في داخل القصر، ولم يكن القصر في داخلي، ولذلك أستطيع الذهاب بلا عودة، أما أنت فالقصر في داخل قلبك. الزهد يا أيها الملك، مكانه هنا، وأشار إلى قلبه.”
― أحمد الشقيري, 40 أربعون

“دائمًا لكي يدخل كلامك عقل مَنْ أمامك اجعله يُفرِغ ما فيه أولاً؛ حتى يكون هناك مكان لكلامك يدخل فيه، وإلا فكيف يُملأ مملوء؟!”
― أحمد الشقيري, ‫أربعون 40‬

“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

“We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. Time and distance blur the edges; then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it's noon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infintesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.”
― Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“And people get all fouled up because they want the world to have meaning as if it were words... As if you had a meaning, as if you were a mere word, as if you were something that could be looked up in a dictionary. You are meaning.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.”
― Alan Watts

“Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery -- the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets -- is this: that for every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together.”
― Alan Watts

“Your body does not eliminate poisons by knowing their names. To try to control fear or depression or boredom by calling them names is to resort to superstition of trust in curses and invocations. It is so easy to see why this does not work. Obviously, we try to know, name, and define fear in order to make it “objective,” that is, separate from “I.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To “have” running water you must let go of it and let it run.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“You become most powerful in whatever you do if the action is performed for its own sake rather than as a means to protect, enhance, or conform to your role identity.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“أريحيني على صدرك
لأني متعب مثلك
دعي اسمي وعنواني وماذا كنت
سنين العمر تخنقها دروب الصمت
وجئت إليك لا أدري لماذا جئت
فخلف الباب أمطار تطاردني
شتاء قاتم الأنفاس يخنقني
وأقدام بلون الليل تسحقني
وليس لدي أحباب
ولا بيت ليؤويني من الطوفان
وجئت إليك تحملني
رياح الشك.. للإيمان
فهل أرتاح بعض الوقت في عينيك
أم أمضي مع الأحزان
وهل في الناس من يعطي
بلا ثمن.. بلا دين.. بلا ميزان؟”
― فاروق جويدة, مختارات من شعر فاروق جويدة: قصائد حب

“إذا كان بعدكِ عنى اختياراً
فإن لقانا وربى مشيئة
لقد كنتِ فى القرب أغلى ذنوبى
وكنتِ على البعد أحلى خطيئة”
― فاروق جويدة, مختارات من شعر فاروق جويدة: قصائد حب

“In Paradise it is true that I shall drink at dawn the pure wine mentioned in the Koran, but where in Paradise are the long walks with intoxicated friends in the night, or the drunken crowds shouting merrily? Where shall I find there the intoxication of Monsoon clouds? Where there is no Autumn how can Spring exist? If the beautiful houris are always there, where will be the sadness of a separation and the joy of union? Where shall we find there a girl who flees away when we would kiss her?”
― Ghalib

“This is something I know: damaged women? We don't think we deserve kindness. IN fact, when kindness happens to us, we go a little berserk. It's threatening. Deeply. Because if I have to admit how profoundly I need kindness? I have to admit that I hid the me who deserves it down in a sadness well.”
― Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water

“إذا اردت النجاح بأقل جهد و اسرع وقت ممكن..أو اردت زيادة فعاليتك و التمتع بوقت فراغ اكبر؛ ابحث عن ال (20%) الاكثر فاعلية في حياتك, وتخلص من ال(80%) التي لاتستحق ماتبذله فيها من وقت و جهد و حرق أعصاب!!
الانجاز و المتعة”
― فهد عامر الأحمدي, نظرية الفستق

“Before you came,
things were as they should be:
the sky was the dead-end of sight,
the road was just a road, wine merely wine.

Now everything is like my heart,
a color at the edge of blood:
the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns,
the gold when we meet, the season ablaze,
the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames,
and the black when you cover the earth
with the coal of dead fires.

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?
The sky is a shirt wet with tears,
the road a vein about to break,
and the glass of wine a mirror in which
the sky, the road, the world keep changing.

Don’t leave now that you’re here—
Stay. So the world may become like itself again:
so the sky may be the sky,
the road a road,
and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.”
― Faiz Ahmad Faiz, 100 Poems by Faiz Ahmed Fiza

“The Love I Gave You Once

My beloved,
My own,
Do not demand the love
I gave you once.

For a moment, I really believed
That you alone gave meaning
To my withered life;
That the accelerating pain
Of my unrequited love,
Would make me forget
All other torments
Of this troubled world;
That your face lent stability
To the restless spring;
That nothing else mattered
In this empty world
But your deep, seductive eyes.

For a moment, I really believed
That if I could only possess you,
I could conquer Fate itself.

But all that was false,
A mere illusion.

This world of ours bleeds
With more pains than just the pain of love;
And many more pleasures beckon us all the time
Than just the fleeting pleasures of a reunion with you.

For untold centuries,
The affluent have always woven many webs of intrigue,
Dark and cruel and mysterious,
And dressed them up in silks and brocades.
And for all those years,
On every street and in every bazaar,
Human bodies have been brazenly sold,
Dressed in dust and bathed in blood,
Malnourished, misshapen and baked by disease.

Time and time again,
My eyes are diverted
To this tragic scene,
Your beauty is alluring as ever,
Your arms inviting as always:
But how can I ever ignore
All this ugliness, all this pain?

Yes, my love,
This world of ours bleeds
With more pains that just the pain of love;
And many more pleasures beckon us all the time
Than just the fleeting pleasure of a reunion with you.

My beloved,
My own,
Do not demand the love
I gave you once.”
― Faiz Ahmed Faiz

“سأبحث عن إيجابياتهم، وسأظهرها لهم لأجعلهم يرون أنفسهم بأبهى صورة ممكنة،”
― مهدي الموسوي, ‫الرقص مع الحياة‬