Alia Amir > Alia's Quotes

“I am convinced that most people do not grow up...We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.”
― Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
― Albert Einstein

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“Keep only those things that speak to your heart. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest. By doing this, you can reset your life and embark on a new lifestyle.”
― Marie Kondō, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

“There ain't no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.”
― Kate DiCamillo, Because of Winn-Dixie

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living

“Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better."
-- The Alchemist”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“When someone leaves, it's because someone else is about to arrive.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

“Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”
― Paulo Coelho, Brida

“When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.”
― Paulo Coelho, Brida

“You think because you understand 'one' you must also understand 'two', because one and one make two. But you must also understand 'and'.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.
~Maya Angelou
Remember this because it will happen many times in your life. When people show you who they are the first time believe them. Not the 29th. time. When a man doesn't call you back the first time, when you are mistreated the first time, when someone shows you lack of integrity or dishonesty the first time, know that this will be followed many many other times, that will some point in life come back to haunt or hurt you. Live your life in truth. Don't pretend to be someone you're not. You will survive anything if you live your life from the point of view of truth.”
― Oprah Winfrey

“This world cannot break you—unless you give it permission. And it cannot own you unless you hand it the keys—unless you give it your heart. And so, if you have handed those keys to dunya for a while—take them back. This isn’t the End. You don’t have to die here. Reclaim your heart and place it with its rightful owner:
God.”
― Yasmin Mogahed, Reclaim Your Heart: Personal Insights on Breaking Free from Life's Shackles

“There is no sin so great as ignorance. Remember this.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“The best way to choose what to keep and what to throw away is to take each item in one’s hand and ask: “Does this spark joy?” If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it. This is not only the simplest but also the most accurate yardstick by which to judge.”
― Marie Kondō, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

“When someone shows you who they are believe them the first time.”
― Maya Angelou

“I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”
― Malcolm X

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Your darkness is a symphony

Played in explosions of silence to a crowd that has fallen in love with noise

If they refuse to applaud you
It isn't because your music isn't beautiful
It is because they have no idea how to love what they don't understand
And that, my darling, is the most horrific flaw in this mixed up world”
― Christopher Poindexter

“The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.”
― Marie Kondō, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

“Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does.”
― David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks.”
― Robert Cormier, Heroes

“The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.”
― Robert Cormier

“I look at the Augusteum,and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all. It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated. The Augusteum warns me to not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. Yesterday I might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough--but tomorrow I could be a fireworks depository. Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“The only time you truly become an adult is when you finally forgive your parents for being just as flawed as everyone else.”
― Douglas Kennedy, The Pursuit of Happiness

“You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
― Maya Angelou