Hadi Ali > Hadi's Quotes

“Before you came,
things were as they should be:
the sky was the dead-end of sight,
the road was just a road, wine merely wine.

Now everything is like my heart,
a color at the edge of blood:
the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns,
the gold when we meet, the season ablaze,
the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames,
and the black when you cover the earth
with the coal of dead fires.

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?
The sky is a shirt wet with tears,
the road a vein about to break,
and the glass of wine a mirror in which
the sky, the road, the world keep changing.

Don’t leave now that you’re here—
Stay. So the world may become like itself again:
so the sky may be the sky,
the road a road,
and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.”
― Faiz Ahmad Faiz, 100 Poems by Faiz Ahmed Fiza

“اس وقت تو یوں لگتا ہے اب کچھ بھی نہیں ہے
مہتاب نہ سورج، نہ اندھیرا نہ سویرا

آنکھوں کے دریچوں پہ کسی حسن کی چلمن
اور دل کی پناہوں میں کسی درد کا ڈیرا

ممکن ہے کوئی وہم تھا، ممکن ہے سنا ہو
گلیوں میں کسی چاپ کا اک آخری پھیرا

شاخوں میں خیالوں کے گھنے پیڑ کی شاید
اب آ کے کرے گا نہ کوئی خواب بسیرا

اک بَیر، نہ اک مہر، نہ اک ربط نہ رشتہ
تیرا کوئی اپنا، نہ پرایا کوئی میرا

مانا کہ یہ سنسان گھڑی سخت کڑی ہے
لیکن مرے دل یہ تو فقط اک ہی گھڑی ہے

ہمت کرو جینے کو تو اک عمر پڑی ہے

"فیض احمد فیض"

میو ہسپتال، لاہور
4، مارچ 82ء”
― Faiz Ahmad Faiz

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
― Pablo Neruda, Love: Ten Poems

“Well, now
If little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you
Little by little
If suddenly you forget me
Do not look for me
For I shall already have forgotten you

If you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my life
And you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots
Remember
That on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms
And my roots will set off to seek another land”
― Pablo Neruda, Selected Poems

“You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one's whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy; only because of that. It's everything, everything, Whoever learns will at once immediately become happy, that same moment...
"And when did you find out that you were so happy?"
"Last week, on Tuesday, no, Wednesday, because it was Wednesday by then, in the night."
"And what was the occasion?"
"I don't remember, just so; I was pacing the room...it makes no difference. I stopped my clock, it was two thirty-seven."
"As an emblem that time should stop?"
Kirillov did not reply.
"They're not good," he suddenly began again, "because they don't know they're good. When they find out, they won't violate the girl. They must find out that they're good, then they'll all become good at once, all, to a man.
"Well, you did find out, so you must be good?"
"I am good."
"With that I agree, incidentally," Stavrogin muttered frowningly.
"He who teaches that all are good, will end the world."
"He who taught it was crucified."
"He will come, and his name is the man-god."
"The God-man?"
"The man-god--that's the whole difference."
"Can it be you who lights the icon lamp?"
"Yes, I lit it."
"You've become a believer?"
"The old woman likes the icon lamp...she's busy today," Kirillov muttered.
"But you don't pray yet?"
"I pray to everything. See, there's a spider crawling on the wall, I look and am thankful to it for crawling."
His eyes lit up again. He kept looking straight at Stavrogin, his gaze firm and unflinching. Stavrogin watched him frowningly and squeamishly, but there was no mockery in his eyes.
"I bet when I come the next time you'll already believe in God," he said, getting up and grabbing his hat.
"Why?" Kirillov also rose.
"If you found out that you believe in God, you would believe; but since you don't know yet that you believe in God, you don't believe," Nikolai Vsevolodovich grinned.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons

“In my fool hardy youth, when my friends were dreaming of heroic deeds in the realms of engineering and law, finance and national politics, I dreamt of becoming a librarian. ”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony--Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“Information paints no picture, sings no song, and writes no poem.”
― R.F. Georgy, Notes from the Cafe

“I'm now asking an idle question of my own: which is better--cheap happiness, or lofty suffering? Well, which is better?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?
Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.
And look, you see how handsome and powerful I am?
The son of a great man, the mother who gave me life--
A deathless goddess. But even for me, I tell you,
Death and the strong force of fate are waiting.
There will come a dawn or sunset or high noon
When a man will take my life in battle too--
flinging a spear perhaps
Or whipping a deadly arrow off his bow.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be more lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
― Brad Pitt

“And overpowered by memory
Both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely
For man - killing Hector, throbbing, crouching
Before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself,
Now for his father, now for Patroclus once again
And their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.”
― Homer, The Iliad