Aicha > Aicha's Quotes

“Vienna wasn't just a city, it was a tone that either one carries forever in one's soul or one does not. It was the most beautiful thing in my life. I was poor, but I was not alone, because I had a friend. And Vienna was like another friend. When it rained in the tropics, I always heard the voice of Vienna. And at other times too. Sometimes deep in the virgin forests I smelled the musty smell of the entrance hall in Hietzing. Music and everything I loved was in the stones of Vienna, and in people's glances and their behavior, the way pure feelings are part of one's very heart. You know when the feelings stop hurting. Vienna in winter and spring. The allés in Schönbrunn. The blue light in the dormitory at the academy, the great white stairwell with the baroque statue. Morning ridings in the Prater. The mildew in the riding school. I remember all of it exactly, and I wanted to see it again...”
― Sándor Márai, Embers

“يمكن أن يكون لديك كل شيء في الحياة، يمكنك التغلب على كل ما حولك وفي العالم، كل شيء يمكن أن تعطيك إياه الحياة ويمكنك انتزاع كل شيء، لكن لا يمكنك أبداً تغيير الأذواق، الميول، الإيقاعات الحيوية لشخص محدد، هذه الخصوصية، هه الكيفية التي تجعلك خاصاً ومختلفاً التي تطبع الشخص الذي يهمك أمره.”
― شاندور ماراي, اللقاء الأخير

“الزمن يحتفظ بكل شيء، لكن كل شيء يعود باهتاً مثل الصور القديمة المثبتة فوق صفائح معدنية. الضوء ومرور الزمن يمحيان التفاصيل الدقيقة التي تميز الوجوه المصورة. على المرء النظر إلى الصورة من زوايا مختلفة والبحث عن الضوء المناسب للتعرف على وجه الشخص الذي ظلت ملامحه مثبتة على المرآة الكامدة للصفيحة. بالطريقة ذاتها تتبدد في الزمن كل الذكريات الإنسانية. ثم، في لحظة غير متوقعة يأتينا شعاع من النور فنرى الوجه المنسي ذاته.”
― شاندور ماراي, اللقاء الأخير

“العزلة هي أيضاً حالة في منتهى الخصوصية. أحياناً تَمثُل كغابة ممتلئة بالمخاطر والمفاجآت. أنا أعرف كل تنوعاتها. السأم الذي تحاول عبثاً جعله يتوارى مستعيناً بنسق حياة منظمة بشكل اصطناعي. الأزمات المتكررة وغير ، المتوقعة. العزلة هي مكان طافح بالأسرار، مثل الغابة.”
― شاندور ماراي, اللقاء الأخير

“Tomorrow, everyone who is beautiful will come under suspicion. As will those with talent and those with character.” His voice was hoarse. “Don’t you understand? To be called beautiful will be an insult; talent will be called a provocation, and character an outrage. Because it’s their turn now, and they will appear everywhere, from everywhere, emerging in their hundreds of millions and more. Everywhere. The ugly ones, the talentless, those without any character. And they’ll throw vitriol in the face of beauty. They will tar and slander talent. They will stab through the heart anyone with character. They’re here already … And there’ll be more of them. Be careful!”
― Sándor Márai, La mujer justa

“I am thinking that people find truth and collect experiences in vain, for they cannot change their fundamental natures. And perhaps the only thing in life one can do is to take the givens of one’s fundamental nature and tailor them to reality as cleverly and carefully as one can. That is the most we can accomplish.”
― Sándor Márai, Embers

“لا شئ أخطر من رجل لا يخضع للطاغية”
― Sándor Márai, Casanova in Bolzano

“Evidently one endures anything, provided one has a goal.”
― Sándor Márai, Embers

“We age slowly. First our pleasure in life and other people declines, everything gradually becomes so real, we understand the significance of everything, everything repeats itself in a kind of troubling boredom. It's the function of age. We know a glass is only a glass. A man, poor creature, is only mortal, no matter what he does. Then our bodies age: not all at once. First it is the eyes, or the legs, or the heart. We age by installments. And then suddenly our spirits begin to age: the body may have grown old, but our souls still yearn and remember and search and celebrate and long for joy. And when the longing for joy disappears, all that are left are memories or vanity, and then, finally, we are truly old. One day we wake up and rub our eyes and do not know why we have woken...Nothing surprising can ever happen again...there's nothing we want anymore, either good or bad...That is old age. There's still some spark inside us, a memory, a goal, someone we would like to see again, something we would like to say or learn, and we know the time will come, but then suddenly it is no longer important to learn the truth and answer to it as we had assumed in all the decades of waiting. Gradually we understand the world and then we die.”
― Sándor Márai

“Every exercise of power incorporates a faint, almost imperceptible, element of contempt for those over whom the power is exercised. One can only dominate another human soul if one knows, understands, and with the utmost tact despises the person one is subjugating.”
― Sándor Márai, Embers

“You can even make facts lie.”
― Sándor Márai, La herencia de Eszter

“Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "That's what I want too.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms