Yasser Fathy > Yasser's Quotes

“I may not be as stong as I think, but I know many tricks and I have resolution.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“How did you go bankrupt?"
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“I loved you when I saw you today and I loved you always but I never saw you before.”
― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

“Good writing is good conversation, only more so.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."
— George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)

"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."
— Churchill's response”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it....”
― George Bernard Shaw

“It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be deceived by them”
― François de La Rochefoucauld

“There are few things we should keenly desire if we really knew what we wanted.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld

“Thinkers think and doers do. But until the thinkers do and the doers think, progress will be just another word in the already overburdened vocabulary by sense.”
― Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“It's amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.”
― John Guare, Landscape of the Body

“The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“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

“It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?" Marmeladov’s question came suddenly into his mind "for every man must have somewhere to turn...”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, 'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You

“و لكن الرافعي لا يقدم لنا تفسيراً لهذه الظاهرة العجيبة ، و هي قوة و اتساع المقاومة المصرية للحملة الفرنسية .. ثم اختفاء هذه الروح مائة عام (حتى لو قبلنا تشبيه ثورة 19 بالحرب الفعلية التي شنها الشعب كله ضد الفرنسيين ) فسيبقى السؤال .. لماذا لم يواجه الانجليز مثل هذه المقاومة بعد الاحتلال (1882) ؟! إن "محمد عبده" يحاول أن يجيب على هذا السؤال بنسبة ذلك إلى استبداد محمد علي و قتله هو و أولاده لروح الأمة.”
― محمد جلال كشك, ودخلت الخيل الأزهر

“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”
― William Faulkner

“It's all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won't be over until tomorrow.”
― William Faulkner

“Beyond that room is still another, to which one is not admitted, and where one sees glimpses of papa -- an extremely enigmatical person ! Nurse and mamma are comprehensible: they dress Grisha, feed him, and put him to bed, but what papa exists for is unknown.
There is another enigmatical person, auntie, who presented Grisha with a drum. She appears and disappears. Where does she disappear to ? Grisha has more than once looked under the bed, behind the trunk, and under the sofa, but she was not there.”
― Anton Chekhov

“ومن العسير على النفس حقًا، أن تناقش نظرية تجعل احتلال مصر بداية تاريخها الديموقراطي (( فكرًا وتنظيمًا )).. ما من أمة ترضى أن تُمتهن كرامتها ويُشوه تاريخُها على هذا النحو .. وأي سم يترسب في عقول الجيل الناشئ، عندما يُلقن أن الاحتلال - بعكس ما يُقال - هو الذي حمل الديموقراطية إلى مصر فكرًت وتنظيمًا .. وأن المشاركة في الحكم لم يكن لها أي جذور في تاريخنا لا فكرًا ولا ممارسةً ؟!”
― محمد جلال كشك, ودخلت الخيل الأزهر

“كان المماليك قد اكتشفوا و استفادوا من صفة اساسية في تحركات شعبنا, هي الانفعالية و انعدام التنظيم الذي يتابع المقاومة .. لذلك كان اجتهادهم دائما, هو صرف الجماهير المنفعلة و "تبريد" القضية. فاذا ما انصرفت الجماهير, صعب - ان لم نقل استحال - تحريكها مرة اخرى. لذلك كان القصاص الرادع هو ما تنزله العامة قبل ان تبرد القضية”
― محمد جلال كشك, ودخلت الخيل الأزهر

“The purpose of life, as far as I can tell… is to find a mode of being that’s so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief

“You don't get to choose not to pay a price, you only get to choose which price you pay”
― Jordan B. Peterson

“The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power. Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos