Ali Omari > Ali's Quotes

“The happiness of the drop is to die in the river.”
― Imam Al-Ghazali

“What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.”
― Confucius

“A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.”
― Franz Kafka

“By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.”
― Franz Kafka

“Attack the evil that is within yourself, rather than attacking the evil that is in others.”
― Confucius

“And remember, no matter where you go, there you are.”
― Confucius

“I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.”
― Franz Kafka

“There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.”
― Franz Kafka

“A lion chased me up a tree, and I greatly enjoyed the view from the top.”
― Confucius

“You are free and that is why you are lost.”
― Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father

“In the end
these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?”
― Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
― Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni

“Evil is whatever distracts.”
― Franz Kafka

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”
― Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni

“He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Whatever a monk keeps pursuing with his thinking and pondering, that becomes the inclination of his awareness.”
― Siddhārtha Gautama

“What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.”
― Anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita

“[They] agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
― Narcotics Anonymous

“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
― Aristotle

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
― Albert Einstein

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
― Aristotle

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
― Albert Einstein

“I examined the poets, and I look on them as people whose talent overawes both themselves and others, people who present themselves as wise men and are taken as such, when they are nothing of the sort.

From poets, I moved to artists. No one was more ignorant about the arts than I; no one was more convinced that artists possessed really beautiful secrets. However, I noticed that their condition was no better than that of the poets and that both of them have the same misconceptions. Because the most skillful among them excel in their specialty, they look upon themselves as the wisest of men. In my eyes, this presumption completely tarnished their knowledge. As a result, putting myself in the place of the oracle and asking myself what I would prefer to be — what I was or what they were, to know what they have learned or to know that I know nothing — I replied to myself and to the god: I wish to remain who I am.

We do not know — neither the sophists, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I— what the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are. But there is this difference between us: although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something; whereas, I, if I know nothing, at least have no doubts about it. As a result, all this superiority in wisdom which the oracle has attributed to me reduces itself to the single point that I am strongly convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know.”
― Socrates

“Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.”
― Rumi

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.”
― Albert Einstein

“No human being is illegal.”
― Elie Wiesel