Bayan Haddad > Bayan's Quotes

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“إذا كان الناس يفضلون, في بعض الأوقات, تذكّر الأيام الجميلة من الماضي, فإنّ الأيام القاسية يصبح لها جمالٌ من نوع خاص, حتى الصعوبات التي عاشوها تتحول في الذاكرة إلى بطولة غامضة, ولا يصدقون أنهم احتملوا ذلك كله واستمروا بعد ذلك !”
― عبدالرحمن منيف, النهايات

“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime...”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Essays, Letters and Miscellanies

“The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all.”
― Walt Disney Company, Mulan

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”
― Maya Angelou

“It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it.”
― Lou Holtz

“When we turn around & come face to face with our destiny, we discover that words (spoken) are not enough. I know so many people who are brilliant speakers but are quite incapable of practising what they preach. It's one thing to describe a situation & quite another to experience it.

I realised a long time ago that a warrior in search of his dream must take his inspiration from what he actually does & not from what he imagines himself doing.”
― Paulo Coelho, Aleph

“ليس بالضرورة أن تكون الأشياء العميقة معقّدة.
وليس بالضرورة أن تكون الأشياء البسيطة ساذجة..
إن الانحياز الفنّي الحقيقي هو:
كيف يستطيع الإنسان أن يقول الشيء العميق ببساطة”
― غسان كنفاني

“Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire.”
― Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Maxims

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“Love, whether newly born or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“It is a good lesson - though it may often be a hard one - for a man... to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society. The thoughts alone suffice them, without investing itself in the flesh and blood of action.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fate proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; coffin, too. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds most light, and alas! most night.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

“The real voice is stiller and smaller and seems to know, without confusion, the difference between right and wrong and the subtle delineation between the beautiful and profane. It's not an agitated voice, but ever patient as though it approves a million false starts. The voice I am talking about is a deep water of calming wisdom.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“I think life is staggering and we're just too used to it.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn't mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It's a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“هذا تراب فلسطينِ يعاد لكم
في جسم كل شهيد نير الكفن
إن كان هذا تراباً أصله بشرٌ
كذاك كل تراب الأرض في وطني
فاطلب رفات جميع الطيبين بها
يسلموك تراب الريف و المدن”
― تميم البرغوثي

“وما كلُّ نفسٍ حينَ تَلْقَى حَبِيبَها
تُـسَرُّ، ولا كُلُّ الغـِيابِ يُضِيرُها”
― تميم البرغوثي

“قالت لي وقد أَمْعَنْتُ ما أَمْعنْتْ
يا أيها الباكي وراءَ السورِ، أحمقُ أَنْتْ؟
أَجُنِنْتْ؟
لا تبكِ عينُكَ أيها المنسيُّ من متنِ الكتابْ
لا تبكِ عينُكَ أيها العَرَبِيُّ واعلمْ أنَّهُ
في القدسِ من في القدسِ لكنْ
لا أَرَى في القدسِ إلا أَنْتْ”
― تميم البرغوثي, في القدس

“What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. We had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, and the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You can't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build your world from it.”
― Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
― Desmond Tutu