Dalia Ismail > Dalia's Quotes

“Vaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter's mind. It was like a dark and ominous landscape seen by a flash of lightning and in a moment hidden again by the night. She shuddered at what she saw.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“Life would be a lot easier if conversations were rewindable and erasable, like videos. Or if you could instruct people to disregard what you just said, like in a courtroom.”
― Sophie Kinsella, Confessions of a Shopaholic

“What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is the cause of human intelligence and vigour? Hardship and freedom: conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and the weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium upon the loyal alliance of capable men, upon self-restraint, patience, and decision. And the institution of the family, and the emotions that arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the tenderness for offspring, parental self-devotion, all found their justification and support in the imminent dangers of the young.”
― H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

“وليس الخلد مرتبة تلقى ... وتؤخذ من شفاه الجاهلينا”
― أحمد شوقي

“هذا البلد ملئ بالمقابر، ومع ذلك لا شئ يموت فيه.”
― محمد المنسي قنديل, يوم غائم في البر الغربي

“كان النيل نهرا من أغرب أنهار الدنيا...ينحدر من تلال أفريقيا البعيدة، مهيبا كملك، لا يأبه بالغابات الكثيفة، ولا بحرقة الصحراء الممتدة...ويمضي متفردا مثل شاعر حزين وسط مجاهل الصحراء...لا يهدأ ولا يأخذ سمة الوقار و العبوس إلا عندما يلمح رؤوس النخيل في جنوبي وادي مصر، أقدم نخيل عرفه بشر، يقف مزهوا على ضفاف النهر منذ آماد بعيدة، غرسه الفراعنة و شذبه الأقباط و أكل من بلحه جنود الرومان و عرف الفاتحون العرب أسرار فسائله فنشروها...ترتفع القواديس إلى أعلى حاملة دفقات سحرية من مياه النهر، ثم تلقي بها إلى القنوات التي تتفرع و تتفرع على وجه الأرض كشرايين الجسد، في وقت الفيضان تكون حمراء كالدم، و الأرض سوداء كالمسك، والزرع أخضر كالياقوت، و القمح اصفر كأحجار اليشب...و يصعد النخل كأذرع الآلهة القديمة، جذوره في رطوبة الطمي، بينما رأسه في وهج السماء...وتنفرط عقود الحمائم كي تملأ عيونها من مشهد المياه الزمردية قبل أن تؤوب إلى أعشاشها في كل مساء"،”
― محمد المنسي قنديل, يوم غائم في البر الغربي

“كنت أريد أن يشعر المصريين بوجودهم وألا يموتوا بهذه الكثافة, لقد ماتوا وهم يحفرون القناة وماتوا في حرب عرابي وماتوا في الفياضانات والأوبئة والكوارث, ولا أحد يهتم بموتهم لأنهم يتحولون من شخصيات الي أرقام, لا مصائر للأرقام, ولا دية لها, ولا حتي وقفة عابرة للرثاء.”
― محمد المنسي قنديل, يوم غائم في البر الغربي

“من يزيح أقنعة الزمن وينزع لفائف الكتان عن غموض الحقيقة ؟”
― محمد المنسي قنديل, يوم غائم في البر الغربي

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“I have walked a stair of swords,
I have worn a coat of scars.
I have vowed with hollow words,
I have lied my way to the stars
-Songs of Sapphique”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
― Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

“oh shit it's shit”
― Stephen King, Different Seasons

“Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations to bring down a multitude of saints crashing among the hazels and nougatines”
― Joanne Harris, Chocolat

“It's a little place on the Pacific Ocean. You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.”
― Stephen King, Different Seasons

“That small world, like the great one out of doors, had the capacity of easily forgetting its dead; and when the cook had said she was a quiet-tempered lady, and the housekeeper had said it was the common lot, and the butler had said who'd have thought it, and the housemaid had said she couldn't hardly believe it, and the footman had said it seemed exactly like a dream, they had quite worn the subject out, and began to think their mourning was wearing rusty too.”
― Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

“It is when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough wind, that we are the most disposed to picture ourselves what flowers they might have borne, if they had flourished.”
― Charles Dickens

“If you find yourselves in cuttings or in tunnels, don't you play no secret games, Keep your whistles going, and let's know where you are.”
― Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

“We loved killing time and had perfected several ways of doing so. We wandered the hallways carrying papers that indicated some mission of business when in reality we were in search of free candy. ”
― Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End

“almost nothing was more annoying than having our wasted time wasted on something not worth wasting it on”
― Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End

“We found ourselves wanting to hurry time along, which was not in the long run good for our health. Everybody was trapped in this contradiction but nobody ever dared to articulate it.”
― Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End

“It was madness to leave without your useless shit. You came in with it, you left with it--that was how it worked. What would you use to clutter a new office with if not your useless shit? We could remember Old Brizz with this box of useless shit, shifting the box from arm to arm as he talked with the building guy. Of course, Old Brizz never had an office again. His useless shit really was useless. He had cause to leave his useless shit behind. But his was a rare case. All things considered, it was better to take your useless shit with you.”
― Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End

“We had these sudden revelations that employment, the daily nine-to-five, was driving us far from our better selves.”
― Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End

“A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
― Elizabeth Appell

“The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing?”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love