Haniya Asad > Haniya's Quotes

“You only truly possess that which you cannot lose in a shipwreck.”
― أبو حامد الغزالي

“Verily, the weight of half of disbelief in the world is carried by religious people who made God detestable to His servants.”
― Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali

“Just as you have taken returning to sins as a habit, then also take returning to tawba as a habit, because through tawba you expiate your past sins, and it is very possible that you may have the fortune to die while in a state of tawba.”
― Al Ghazali

“If a man knows not his own soul, which is the nearest thing to him, what is the use of his claiming to know others? It is as if a beggar who has not the wherewithal for a meal should claim to be able to, feed a town.”
― Al-Ghazzali, The Alchemy of Happiness

“If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“You can be sincere and still be stupid.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Beauty will save the world.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Insulted and Humiliated

“To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the PRIVACY of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.”
― Dostoyevsky Fyodor

“This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“When reason fails, the devil helps!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Soon madness has worn you down. It’s easier to do what it says than argue. In this way, it takes over your mind. You no longer know where it ends and you begin. You believe anything it says. You do what it tells you, no matter how extreme or absurd. If it says you’re worthless, you agree. You plead for it to stop. You promise to behave. You are on your knees before it, and it laughs.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“You wake up one morning and there it is, sitting in an old plaid bathrobe in your kitchen, unpleasant and unshaved. You look at it, heart sinking. Madness is a rotten guest.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“Madness strips you of memory and leaves you scrabbling around on the floor of your brain for the snatches and snippets of what happened, what was said, and when.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“I’m sick. It’s true. It isn’t going to go away. All my life, I’ve thought that if I just worked hard enough, it would. I’ve always thought that if I just pulled myself together, I’d be a good person, a calm person, a person like everyone else.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“Here's how you make absolutely sure that you'll keep getting crazier by the day:

- Ignore everything your psychiatrist tells you. Disregard all his warnings about the way you're living your life - in fact, do absolutely everything he tells you not to.

- Don't always take your pills. They're a hassle, and what if they make you dull? You don't need them. And if you're going to take the pills, take them with a glass of wine. It will make the mood swings even more exciting.

- Don't sleep; you've got to make sure your body clock is as fucked up as possible. The less you sleep, the more manic you'll get, until soon you'll go completely over the edge.

- Drink caffeine. Tons of it. Take your morning pills with coffee. It can't hurt.

- Work around the clock - it's important to put yourself under as much stress as possible.

- Eating normally would stabilize your blood sugar, so don't do that; it's better to keep your body in as unstable a state as you possibly can for maximum results.

- And, above all else, drink like a fish.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“There are other kinds of damage, to the people in your life, to your sense of who you are and what you can do, to your future”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“The last place I want to be is the hospital, but I'm not stupid. I know when it's time to go in. I am so terrified of myself and of the vast, frightening world, that the psych ward, with its safe locked doors, sounds like a relief.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“It's my secret, my saviour. It's reliable. It saves me from the unpredictable mind, where the thoughts are a cesspool, swirling, eddying with rip tide. When I starve, the sinking, pressing, black sadness lifts off me and I feel weightless, empty, light. No racing thoughts, no need to move, no reasons to hide in the dark. When I throw up, I purge all the fears, paranoia, the thoughts. The eating disorder gives me comfort. I couldn't let it go if I tried.

It is what I need so badly, a homemade replacement for what a psychiatrist would prescribe for me if he knew: a mood stabilizer. My eating disorder is the first thing I have found that works. It becomes indispensable as soon as it begins. I am calm in my starvation, all my apprehensions focused. No need to control my mind-I control my body, so my mood levels out. I live in single-minded pursuit of something very specific: thinness, death. I act with intention, discipline. I am free.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered. That damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Suicide Note:
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
-Langston Hughes”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

“Depression, somehow, is much more in line with society's notions of what women are all about: passive, sensitive, hopeless, helpless, stricken, dependent, confused, rather tiresome, and with limited aspirations. Manic states, on the other hand, seem to be more the provenance of men: restless, fiery, aggressive, volatile, energetic, risk taking, grandiose and visionary, and impatient with the status quo. Anger or irritability in men, under such circumstances, is more tolerated and understandable; leaders or takers of voyages are permitted a wider latitude for being temperamental. Journalists and other writers, quite understandably, have tended to focus on women and depression, rather than women and mania. This is not surprising: depression is twice as common in women as men. But manic-depressive illness occurs equally often in women and men, and, being a relatively common condition, mania ends up affecting a large number of women. They, in turn, often are misdiagnosed, receive poor, if any, psychiatric treatment, and are at high risk for suicide, alcoholism, drug abuse, and violence. But they, like men who have manic-depressive illness, also often contribute a great deal of energy, fire, enthusiasm, and imagination to the people and world around them.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“The Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful. In some strange way, I have tried to do that with manic-depressive illness. It has been a fascinating, albeit deadly, enemy and companion; I have found it to be seductively complicated, a distillation both of what is finest in our natures, and of what is most dangerous.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness