Homeland Quotes

“كل يوم أكتشف في وطني مجداً جديداً
وعاراً جديداً
أخباراً ترفع الرأس
وأخرى ترفع الضغط”
― محمد الماغوط

“ثمة شيء ننساه في زحمة التسابق على حفظ الجُمل الثورية الجميلة. هذا الشيء هو الكرامة الإنسانية. ليس وطني دائماً على حق. ولكنني لا أستطيع أن أمارس حقاً حقيقياً إلا في وطني.”
― محمود درويش, يوميات الحزن العادي

“When we settle down in the homeland of love, let us not forget to choose an uplifting horizon, where humor and joyfulness are along the way, and our heartbeat guides the rhythm of our day and composes the song of our passion. ("Crystallization under an umbrella" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“ليس وطني دائماً على حق. ولكنني لا استطيع ان امارس حقاً حقيقياً الا في وطني .”
― محمود درويش

“No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs - this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

“every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map. (p. 18)”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

“I wonder what it felt to move to a country where you didn't grow up. I had thought about that often since my sister got married. Do you become a character in a story native to that land, or do you, somewhere in your heart, want to return to your homeland.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, N.P

“اِختِلافُ النَهارِ وَاللَيلِ يُنسي اُذكُرا لِيَ الصِبا وَأَيّامَ أُنسي

وَصِفا لي مُلاوَةً مِن شَبابٍ صُوِّرَت مِن تَصَوُّراتٍ وَمَسِّ

عصفتْ كالصَّبا اللعوبِ ومرّت سِنة ً حُلوة ً، ولذَّة ُ خَلْس

وسلا مصرَ : هل سلا القلبُ عنها أَو أَسا جُرحَه الزمان المؤسّي؟

كلما مرّت الليالي عليه رقَّ ، والعهدُ في الليالي تقسِّي

مُستَطارٌ إذا البواخِرُ رنَّتْ أَولَ الليلِ، أَو عَوَتْ بعد جَرْس

راهبٌ في الضلوع للسفنِ فَطْن كلما ثُرْنَ شاعَهن بنَقسْ

يا ابنة َ اليمِّ ، ما أبوكِ بخيلٌ ما له مولع بمنع وحبس

أَحرامٌ عَلى بَلابِلِهِ الدَو حُ حَلالٌ لِلطَيرِ مِن كُلِّ جِنسِ

كُلُّ دارٍ أَحَقُّ بِالأَهلِ إِلّا في خَبيثٍ مِنَ المَذاهِبِ رِجسِ

نَفسي مِرجَلٌ وَقَلبي شِراعٌ بِهِما في الدُموعِ سيري وَأَرسي

وَاِجعَلي وَجهَكِ الفَنارَ وَمَجرا كِ يَدَ الثَغرِ بَينَ رَملٍ وَمَكسِ

وَطَني لَو شُغِلتُ بِالخُلدِ عَنهُ نازَعَتني إِلَيهِ في الخُلدِ نَفسي”
― أحمد شوقي

“Battle for the sake of honor may be a fine thing for bards to sing of, but it is no way to preserve one's homeland”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Chosen

“Travel opens windows to a rich and diverse world,
which you can never see from your homeland.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“Where you are born--what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own-- stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

“For years I've been searching for a homeland, finally I found it in you..”
― Seja Majeed, The Forgotten Tale of Larsa

“Як умру, то поховайте
Мене на могилі,
Серед степу широкого,
На Вкраїні милій,
Щоб лани широкополі,
І Дніпро, і кручі
Було видно, було чути,
Як реве ревучий.
Як понесе з України
У синєє море
Кров ворожу... отойді я
І лани, і гори —
Все покину і полину
До самого Бога
Молитися... а до того
Я не знаю Бога.
Поховайте та вставайте,
Кайдани порвіте
І вражою злою кров’ю
Волю окропіте.
І мене в сем’ї великій,
В сем’ї вольній, новій,
Не забудьте пом’янути
Незлим тихим словом.”
― Taras Shevchenko, Кобзар

“ამის მადლი და სილამაზე არ დაგვიწყებოდეთ. ქვეყნის სიყვარულს საყველპუროდ და საარშიყოდ ნუ გაიხდით, სამშობლო როსკიპი ქალი არაა, მთვრალს რომ მოგენატრება და მაშინ გაიხსენებ, სამშობლო ტაძარია სალოცავი. მუხლზე დაჩოქილი უნდა იდგე მის საკურთხეველთან, ცალი ხელით პირჯვარს უნდა იწერდე, მეორეთი კი ხმალს იქნევდე, ეშმაკები რომ არ დაეპატრონონ... და კიდევ ერთი, შესაწირავის მიტანა ვერავინ უნდა მოგასწროს ამ ტაძართან.”
― Nodar Dumbadze, მარადისობის კანონი

“Never complete. Never whole.
White skin and an African soul.”
― Michelle Frost

“While America will always, I think, feel foreign to me, New York City is my home. This is where I can construct my own identity freely and reject labels imposed on me.”
― Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina

“The river of my village doesn’t make you think about anything.
When you’re at its bank you’re only at its bank.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep

“For what is life but a succession of change; of one thing after another; painful beginnings, fearful setting out into the unknown, leaving what we are for what we have not yet become. We sail forth boldly, keeping a steady keel and a keen eye on the horizon, to reach islands, land whose fragrance we sniff at at the edge of our dreams; and so we sail on, hoping that the next landfall will be our own bit of earth.”
― Suchen Christine Lim, A Bit of Earth

“Know most of the rooms of thy native country before thou goest over the threshold thereof. Especially seeing England presents thee with so many observables.”
― W.G. Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape

“Amiamo i mondi di fantasia perché il mondo in cui viviamo non ci soddisfa completamente. Troviamo conforto e rifugio nelle pagine di un fumetto, o nell’episodio di un telefilm epico, perché nella fantasia altrui troviamo ciò che la nostra realtà non ci ha ancora dato. Perché vorremmo di più dal mondo reale, e da noi stessi. Grazie a loro ci sentiamo diversi, migliori, forse più forti. Se Iron Man riesce a salvare il pianeta, allora anch’io potrò salvare gli alberghi di mio padre. Se Carrie Mathison riesce ad uccidere un terrorista, allora anche tu potrai fare un lavoro che non ti piace. Non c’è nulla di più immaturo, me ne rendo conto. Un uomo e una donna in età adulta che investono tempo e denaro in faccende da adolescenti. In molti la considerano una follia.”
― Alessia Esse, La tentazione di Laura

“Nostalgia is not linked only with being away from one's homeland, as one may feel nostalgia , too, inside his own homeland.”
― Mohamed Adly, Coco De Mer - the Forbidden Fruit

“But he was forgetting. That terrified him. Sometimes, during practice conversations, he found himself blanking on a word he used to toss around constantly.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“For the place where I was put to live
is stripped of good more and more each day
and seems disposed to perdition.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Purgatorio

“His mother tongue sounded like babble... it didn't feel like it belonged. It felt made-up. And it scared him, sometimes, how often his memory would lapse, how the syllables he'd grown up around could suddenly sound so unfamiliar.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“What’s Palestine with respect to Khalid? He doesn’t know the vase or the picture or the stairs or Halisa or Khaldun. And yet for him, Palestine is something worthy of a man bearing arms for, dying for. For us, for you and me, it’s only a search for something buried beneath the dust of memories. And look what we found beneath that dust. Yet more dust. We were mistaken when we thought the homeland was only the past. For Khalid, the homeland is the future.”
― Ghassan Kanafani, Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories

“Maybe the world misspoke about the big cities, and hid what was most precious in the heart of the land.”
― Madi Fiely, Deceiving Isn't It?

“It had become a valley of absurdities, my homeland.”
― Christian Kracht, Eurotrash

“You can't leave the country that's within you.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“The land on which my home sits was originally woodland but was converted to pasture in the early 1700s by the Guidott family. The meadows provided grazing for the cattle that supplied much of the city's milk and cream. The farmhouse was known as Cream Hall and it is here that city dwellers would come to take tea-- the farm was renowned for its cheesecakes-- and in 1740 a Cake and Ale House opened 'offering cakes dipped in frothing cream, custards and syllabubs.”
― Nigel Slater, A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts

“та знеславив себе і родину і львів
і дівча і курвів і вітчизну і пляцки”
― Юрій Андрухович, Листи в Україну