Youssra > Youssra's Quotes

“The splendid thing
about falling apart
silently...
is that
you can start over
as many times
as you like.”
― Sanober Khan, A Thousand Flamingos

“[T]hat old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air ... Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year's mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.”
― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

“We grow up with such an idealistic view on how our life should be; love, friendships, a career or even the place we will live ~ only to age and realise none of it is what you expected & reality is a little disheartening, when you've reached that realisation; you have learnt the gift of all, any new beginning can start now and if you want anything bad enough you'll find the courage to pursue it with all you have. The past doesn't have to be the future, stop making it so.”
― Nikki Rowe

“Where should I start? I texted my old Jiko this question, and she wrote back this: 現在地で始まるべき. You should start where you are.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes.”
― Carl Friedrich Gauss

“ما اجهل الناس الذين يتوهّمون ان المحبة تتولد بالمعاشرة الطويلة والمرافقة المستمرة.
ان المحبة الحقيقية هي ابنة التفاهم الروحي وان لم يتم هذا التفاهم الروحي بلحظة واحدة لا يتم بعام ولا بجيل كامل”
― جبران خليل جبران, The Broken Wings

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“يحكى الواحد منا عن أمر موجع لحجب الأمر الأكثر ايلاما”
― رضوى عاشور

“If he couldn't forgive you for what you'd done, it was clear to me he was never truly your destiny.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“As a young girl I believed my life would never have been a struggle if Mr.Tanaka hadn't torn me away from my tipsy house. But now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“After this, I couldn't hear their voices any longer; for in my ears I heard a sound like a bird's wings flapping in panic. Perhaps it was my heart, I don't know. But if you've ever seen a bird trapped inside the great hall of a temple, looking for some way out, well, that was how my mind was reacting. It had never occurred to me that my mother wouldn't simply go on being sick. I won't say I'd never wondered what might happen if she should die; I did wonder about it, in the same way I wondered what might happen if our house were swallowed up in an earthquake. There could hardly be life after such an event.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“I understood that he left me at the end of his long life just as naturally as the leaves fall from the trees.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Passion can quickly slip over into jealousy, or even hatred.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“And suddenly everything around me seemed to grow quiet, as if he were the wind that blew and I were just a cloud carried upon it.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.”
― Arthur Golden

“Some times we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“I'm not sure this will make sense to you but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction so that I no longer faced backward toward the past but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would the future be”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Waiting patiently doesn't suit you.I can see you have a great deal of water in your personality. Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things. There's no doubt it's the most versatile of the five elements. It can wash away earth it can put fire it can wear a piece of metal down and sweep it away. And yet, you haven't drawn on those strengths in living your life, Have you?”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“I knew even then that she was right. An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them. Nobu's touch had made a deeper impression on me than most. No one could tell me whether he would be my ultimate destiny, but I had always sensed the en between us. Somewhere in the landscape of my life Nobu would always be present. But could it really be that of all the lessons I'd learned, the hardest one lay just ahead of me? Would I really have to take each of my hopes and put them away where no one would ever see them again, where not even I would ever see them?”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“This humble person has been alive long enough to see two generations of children grow up, and knows how rare it is for ordinary birds to give birth to a swan. The swan who goes on living in its parents' tree will die; this is why those who are beautiful and talented bear the burden of finding their own way into the world.”
― Arthur Golden

“We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course. If I'd never met Mr. Tanaka, my life would have been a simple stream flowing from our tipsy house to the ocean. Mr. Tanaka changed all that when he sent me out into the world.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Sadness was a very heavy thing.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Chairman: "Sometimes", he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Even now that he is gone I have him still, in the richness of my memories. I've lived my life again just telling it to you.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“... nothing in life is ever as simple as we imagine.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“No one knows the author of memoir so well like himself.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Grief is a most peculiar thing; we're so helpless in the face of it.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Every time I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass of a shop, I felt I was someone to be taken seriously; not a girl anymore, but a young woman.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Soren Kierkegaard