Lama Dalbah > Lama's Quotes

“و تحسب أنك جِرم صغير و فيك انطوى العالم الأكبر”
― محيي الدين بن عربي

“Was he an animal that music so captivated him?”
― Franz Kafka

“طوبى لمن علم القلب احتمال السكاكين،
ومن طحنته التجربة
كالقمح حتى صار خبزا، وطوبى لمن
كاد يكتشف الورد فى المزبلة”
― حسين البرغوثي

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself but will be soon," but you know you won't.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

“جَمال المرْأةِ لا يُرى....إنه يُكتَشَفْ ”
― مريد البرغوثي

“ The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”
― Kent M. Keith, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council

“ولنا حزننا ..
وابتساماتنا حين تخفي فقدنا ..
يصل الحزن إلى مرحلة اللاتفسير،
ويطفحُ منكَ كما يطفحُ الزيتُ عن حجرِ المعصرة.
تُزيحُ ترابَ الحياة وتربة الماضي
فتعثر فيها على هيكلٍ للطقوسِ القديمةِ |أو مقبرةْ.
وكأَنكَ تعرف ما لا تعرفُ، والحزنُ هنا يفقدُ أَسبابهْ.
وتحبُّ امرأةً لا تعرفها،
أو تعرفُ أن لا وجه لها،
تحزنُ في دفقاتٍ، والحزنُ هنا لا بيتَ ولابوّابةْ
وضوءُ المدينةِ في الليلِ،
يشبه تعبير عيون دقيقْ.
وشيئاً فشيئاً يُبيدُكَ شيءٌ لا يمدُّ يديهِ إليكْ
وشيئاً فشيئاً يضيعُ الطريقْ
بقربِ الضواحي التي قربَ المحيطْ.”
― حسين البرغوثي, الآثار الشعرية

“my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping
but
I shall go on living.”
― Pablo Neruda

“Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.”
― Bertolt Brecht, Poems 1913-1956

“Sometimes it's more important to be human, than to have good taste. ”
― Bertolt Brecht

“All artforms are in the service of the greatest of all arts: the art of living.”
― Bertolt Brecht

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
― Lao Tzu

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination.”
― John Keats

“For she had eyes and chose me.”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“so I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”
― Pablo Neruda

“Only do not forget, if I wake up crying
it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child

hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands....”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“It was my destiny to love and say goodbye.”
― Pablo Neruda, Still Another Day

“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“خلي صوتنا بعد موتنا مليح
مش عمل باطل وقبض الريح
مش كلامنا اللي هيبقى تراب”
― فؤاد حداد, أيام العجب والموت

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Deep in earth my love is lying
And I must weep alone.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”
― Brene Brown

“I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.”
― Beryl Markham, West with the Night

“I don't even remember the season. I just remember walking between them and feeling for the first time that I belonged somewhere.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower