Fatma Azzahra > Fatma Azzahra's Quotes

“We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses when trying to comfort someone who is in distress. I told him that in English we sometimes say, 'I've been there.' This was unclear to him at first-I've been where? But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific loacation, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.
'So sadness is a place?' Giovanni asked.
'Sometimes people live there for years,' I said.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.”
― Benjamin Mee, We Bought a Zoo

“حين نُحبّ، فنحنُ نحاولُ مدّ ذواتِنا، أي نُضيفُ إلى ذاتِنا مساحةً أخرى، تكمّل فيها نقصا، أو تأمن بها من خوف، أو تخفّف بها من غربة عالَم موحِشٍ وقاسٍ. لا يبحثُ النّاس، غالبا، عن حبيب يُناظِرونه فكريّا، أو يُناقشونه فلسفيّا، أو يخوضوا معه حوارا دينيّا، أي لا يبحثُ النّاس عن “آخَر” أو “موضوع” ليحبّوه. يُحبّ النّاس من لا يرونَ فيه آخَرا تماما، ومن لا تحتاجُ ذواتُهم في حضرتِه إلى أن تتسلّح بدفاعاتِها وأقنعتِها وحِجاجاتِها وحيلِها المعتادة حين تواجهُ العالم.



يشيعُ القولُ بأنّ حبيبَك هو من تستطيعُ في وجودِه أن تكونَ أنت، لكن يُمكِنُنا أن نرى الأمر من زاوية مُقابِلة تماما، فالحبيب هو من لا تحتاجُ في حضرتِه إلى أن تكون “أنت"، ولا تحتاجُ في وجودِه إلى استحضار "أناك"، بل يمكنُك أنت تكونَ حالة مخفّفة جدّا من ذاتك، بلا أقنِعةٍ ودفاعات وحجج وحيل، حالة من "الخفّة الوجوديّة” التي يمكنُ أن تعيشَها مؤقَّتا بلا تبعات.

“ همام يحي”
― همام يحيى, حواف

“لا غائب يعود كاملاً. لا شيء يستعاد كما هو.”
― مريد البرغوثي, رأيت رام الله

“Voilà, ma petite Amélie, vous n'avez pas des os en verre. Vous pouvez vous cogner à la vie. Si vous laissez passer cette chance, alors avec le temps, c'est votre cœur qui va devenir aussi sec et cassant que mon squelette. Alors, allez-y, nom d'un chien!”
― Jean-Pierre Jeunet

“When a feeling was there, they felt as if it would never go; when it was gone, they felt as if it had never been; when it returned, they felt as if it had never gone.”
― George MacDonald

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
― Charles Bukowski

“How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d”
― Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”
― Alice Walker

“Time is a lot of the things people say that God is. There's always preexisting, and having no end. There's the notion of being all powerful-because nothing can stand against time, can it? Not mountains, not armies. And time is, of course, all-healing. Give anything enough time, and everything is taken care of: all pain encompassed, all hardship erased, all loss subsumed. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Remember, man, that thou art dust; and unto dust thou shalt return.

And if time is anything akin to God, I suppose that memory must be the devil.”
― Diana Gabaldon, A Breath of Snow and Ashes

“The story of the luxury trap carries with it an important lesson. Humanity’s search for an easier life released immense forces of change that transformed the world in ways nobody envisioned or wanted. Nobody plotted the Agricultural Revolution or sought human dependence on cereal cultivation. A series of trivial decisions aimed mostly at filling a few stomachs and gaining a little security had the cumulative effect of forcing ancient foragers to spend their days carrying water buckets under a scorching sun. Divine”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“The pursuit of an easier life resulted in much hardship, and not for the last time. It happens to us today. How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“She had blue skin,
And so did he.
He kept it hid
And so did she.
They searched for blue
Their whole life through,
Then passed right by-
And never knew.”
― Shel Silverstein, Every Thing on It

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Just because my dreams are different than yours, it doesn't mean they're unimportant.”
― Greta Gerwig, Little Women: The Screenplay

“To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.”
― Viktor Emil Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning