Safa Bader > Safa Bader's Quotes

“The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case. We don’t teach boys to care about being likable. We spend too much time telling girls that they cannot be angry or aggressive or tough, which is bad enough, but then we turn around and either praise or excuse men for the same reasons. All over the world, there are so many magazine articles and books telling women what to do, how to be and not to be, in order to attract or please men. There are far fewer guides for men about pleasing women.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“الأشقياء في الدنيا كثير، وأعظمهم شقاء ذلك الحزين الصابر الذي قضت عليه ضرورة من ضروريات الحياة أن يهبط بآلامه وأحزانه إلى قرارة نفسه فيودعها هناك، ثم يغلق دونها باباً من الصمت والكتمان، ثم يصعد إلى الناس باش الوجه باسم الثغر متطلقاً متهللاً، كأنه لا يحمل بين جنبيه هماً ولا كمداً!”
― مصطفى لطفي المنفلوطي, العبرات

“Everybody has a little bit of the sun and moon in them. Everybody has a little bit of man, woman, and animal in them. Darks and lights in them. Everyone is part of a connected cosmic system. Part earth and sea, wind and fire, with some salt and dust swimming in them. We have a universe within ourselves that mimics the universe outside. None of us are just black or white, or never wrong and always right. No one. No one exists without polarities. Everybody has good and bad forces working with them, against them, and within them.


PART SUN AND MOON by Suzy Kassem”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“قد يندسل الستار على القليل أو الكثير منها (الذاكرة) ولكنّه لا يمحو نقطة مما وراء الستار.
مهما يكن الستار كثيفا وثقيلا فلابدّ من يوم ترفعه فيه عين اليد التي سدلته. أما "الوسيط" فقد يكون كلمة عابرة أو شيئا تافها”
― ميخائيل نعيمه, مذكرات الأرقش

“كما يكون الإنسان تكون الطبيعة من حوله. فمن جملتْ حياته وصفَت أفكاره رأى الطبيعة جميلة وصافية. ومن قبحت حياته وتشوّشت أفكاره رأى الطبيعة قبيحة ومشوشة.
لذلك فمفتاح الطبيعة ليس في الطبيعة عينها بل في الإنسان نفسه. وذلك المفتاح هو المعرفة. من شاء أن يعرف الطبيعة فليعرف نفسه اولاً. ومن شاء أن يكون سيد الطبيعة فليكن سيّد نفسه.”
― ميخائيل نعيمه, مذكرات الأرقش

“الموت موتان : موت ننزله بالغير ، و موت ينزله الغير بنا . موت نحيا به ، و موت يحيا بنا . حتى الموت في حاجة إلى الحياة . إذ لا حياة للموت إلا بالحياة . و لولاها لما كان .”
― Mikhail Naimy, مذكرات الأرقش

“For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains.

“Longing,” says the poet Robert Hass, “because desire is full of endless distances.” Blue is the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in, for the blue world.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost