Tony Dib > Tony's Quotes

“اعطتني القراءة عذرًا مقبولًا لعزلتي، بل ربما اعطت مغزىً لتلك العزلة المفروضة عليّ”
― Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading

“Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge.”
― Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading

“For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers.”
― Albert Camus

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“It's quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don't do it.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in . . . but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I felt myself in a solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide. What held me back was the idea that no one, absolutely no one, would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life.”
― Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea

“the thing about books is, there are quite a number you don't have to read.”
― Donald Barthelme, The King

“On a tiny planet that has been racing toward oblivion for millions of years, we are born amid sorrow; we grow, we struggle, we grow ill, we suffer, we make others suffer, we cry out, we die, others die, and new beings are born to begin the senseless comedy all over again.”
― Ernesto Sabato, The Tunnel

“I sat pondering the idea of the absence of meaning. Was our life nothing more than a sequence of anonymous screams in a desert of indifferent stars?”
― Ernesto Sábato, El túnel

“فعلى كوكب صغير ، يسير نحو العدم منذ ملايين السنين ، نولد وسط الآلام ونترعرع ، ونجاهد ، ونمرض ، ونتألم ، ونسبب الألم للآخرين ، ونصخب ، ونموت ، يموت أناس ، في حين يولد آخرون ، ليبدأ تكرار الملهاة العقيمة من جديد.”
― Ernesto Sabato, El túnel

“كان هناك ، في جميع الأحوال ، نفق واحد فقط ، مظلم وموحش ، هو نفقي أنا ، النفق الذي أمضيت فيه طفولتي ، وصباي ، وعمري كله. وكنت قد رأيت هذه الفتاة من خلال إحدى القطع الشفافة في الجدار الحجري ، واعتقدت بسذاجة ، أنها كانت آتية من نفق آخر ، موازٍ لنفقي ، بينما هي في الواقع ، تنتمي إلى العالم الواسع ، إلى عالم الذين لا يعيشون في الأنفاق ، والذي لا حدود له ، ولعلها ، بدافع من الفضول اقتربت من إحدى نوافذي الغريبة ، وواجهت مشهد عزلتي الأبدية. وعند ذلك ، بينما كنت ماأزال أتوغل في سراديبي ، كانت هي في الخارج تعيش حياتها العادية ، الحياة الصاخبة التي يحياها أولئك الذين يعيشون في الخارج ، تلك الحياة الغريبة التافهة حيث الرقص والحفلات والمرح والمجون.”
― Ernesto Sabato, El túnel

“The real meaning of persona is a mask, such as actors were accustomed to wear on the ancient stage; and it is quite true that no one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part. Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a blockhead is quite at home in it.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism

“Of how many a man may it not be said that hope made a fool of him until he danced into the arms of death!”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism: The Essays

“The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole!”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism

“If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole, and, in particular, the generations of men as they live their little hour of mock-existence and then are swept away in rapid succession; if we turn from this, and look at life in its small details, as presented, say, in a comedy, how ridiculous it all seems!”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism

“...nostalgia goes beyond individual psychology. At first glance, nostalgia is a longing for a place, but actually it is a yearning for a different time - the time of our childhood, the slower rhythms of our dreams. In a broader sense, nostalgia is a rebellion against the modern idea of time, the time of history and progress. The nostalgic desires to obliterate history and turn it into a private or collective mythology, to revisit time like space, refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition.”
― Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia

“As for time, it is forever shrinking. Oppressed by multitasking and managerial efficiency, we live under a perpetual time pressure. The disease of this millennium will be called chronophobia or speedomania, and its treatment will be embarrassingly old-fashioned. Contemporary nostalgia is not so much about the past as about vanishing the present.”
― Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia

“Yet this points to a paradox of institutionalized nostalgia: the stronger the loss, the more it is overcompensated with commemorations, the starker the distance from the past, and the more it is prone to idealizations.”
― Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia

“Nostalgia (from "nostos" - return home, and "algia" - longing) is a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one's own fantasy. Nostalgic love can only survive in a long-distance relationship. A cinematic image of nostalgia is a double exposure, or a superimposition of two images - of home and abroad, past and present, dream and everyday life. The moment we try to force it into a single image, it breaks the frame or burns the surface.”
― Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia