Mais Atassi > Mais's Quotes

“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
― Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“She was wearing a pair of my pajamas with the sleeves rolled up. When she laughed I wanted her again. A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so. She looked sad. But as we were fixing lunch, and for no apparent reason, she laughed in such a way that I kissed her.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people”
― Dante Alighieri, The Inferno

“Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives... and to the "good life", whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman

“Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“A single metaphor can give birth to love.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful ... Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.

Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.”
― Stephen Fry

“I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that's alive. My self does not differ substantially from yours in terms of its thought. Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of egocentrism.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“Much as I have no wish to hurt anyone's feelings, my first obligation has not been to be nice but to be true to my perhaps peculiar memories, experiences and feelings.”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place

“exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile’s life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement.”
― Edward W. Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays

“In short, Israel is the measure of our failings and our incompetence. We have waited for a great leader for years, but none came; we have waited for a mighty military victory, but we were defeated roundly; we have waited for outside powers (the US or,in its time, the Soviet Union), but none came to our aid. The one thing we have not tried in all seriousness is to rely on OURSELVES: until we do that with a full commitment to success there is no chance that we can advance towards self-determination and freedom from aggression.-1998”
― Edward W. Said

“المكان الذي لا يؤنث، لا يعول عليه”
― محيي الدين بن عربي

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.”
― Hunter S Thompson

“Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

“رباعيات
حيرة
طائفٌ قد طافَ بي في السَحَرِ
ساكباً في عدمٍ
يصخبُ كأسَ العمرِ
صِحتُ يا مولاي ما هذا الذي تفعلهُ
شَذَرَ المولى
فذابت مهجتي بالشذرِ


قُمتُ مذهولاً إلى إبريقِ خمري ثملا
عَلَني أطفئُ نيرانَ ارتباكي بالطلا
سكبَ الإبريقُ في كأسي فراغاً صامتاً
آهِ مولاي
فراغُ الكأسِ بالصمت امتلا


انقر الكأسَ إذا ما نضبت
واشرب رنينَ الكأسِ
واثمل بالرنين
كلُ كأسٍ خمرةً
حتى إذا كان بها ماء حزين
فإذا ما لائمٌ لامكَ فيها
قل صحيحٌ
إنما من يُسكِت الأوجاعُ في ليلٍ
بلا دنيا ودين


ثَمَ طيرٌ يرسلُ الشكوى
كم الصوتُ مرير
باكياً في قفصِ الغربةِ
لا يدري بماذا يستجير
إنه مثلي كَسِيرَ القلب
اشرب
ليسَ عدلٌ أنَ طيراً ذو جناحٍ
لا يطير


غَمَزَ الصاحونَ أَني ثملٌ
ما كذبوا
جئتني من لُبَةِ القلبِ
أنا مضطرب
لم أعد أبصرُ غيرَ تعدادكَ يا واحدُ
يا كلُ
لهذا أشربُ


تبتلي العاشقَ بالحزنِ وبالخمرِ كثير
زد من الاثنينِ
فالصحو من العشقِ خطير
جَثَمَ الحِملُ على ظهري ولم أجثو
وما زلت على الدربِ أسير


ما لبعضِ الناس يرميني بسكري في هواك
وهو سكرانٌ عماراتٍ يسميها رضاك
يا ابن جيبينِ حراماً
إنني أسكرُ
كي أحتملَ الدنيا التي فيها أراك


مَرَ ريقي بحروبِ الجهلِ من كلِ الجهات
أفلا تملأ إبريقي بساتينُ الفرات
قلقا أدعو شَتَاتَ الطير
لموا الشملَ
ما الموتُ سوا هذا الشتات


الثلاثونَ منَ الغربةِ قد ضاعت سدى
لم يعد للطائرِ الحرِ
سوا صمتِ جناحيهِ مدى
كسماواتِ الأغاني
امتلكتها أنكرُ الغربانِ صوتاً
ولقد أيُ حمارٍ يملكُ الجوِ غدا



لِم تأخرتَ عنِ الموعدِ ساعاتٍ وقد كادَ النهار ؟؟؟
اعذريني
كانَ توقيتي على القمةِ
لَم أدرِ إلى الخلفِ تدار
كلُ ما قالوه معقولٌ
ولكن من يصدق ذرةً منهُ
حمار


سيدي تَمَ غنائي
إنما عتبٌ صغير
لِمَ لَم تجعل لبعضِ الناسِ أشكالَ الحمير ؟؟
فتريحَ الناسَ منهم
أم تُرَى أنَ المطايا
سوفَ تحتجُ على هذا المصي”
― مظفر النواب

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. ”
― James Baldwin