Gerges Yousef

“My memories don’t feel as though they’ve been pulled up by the root. Even if they fade, something remains. Like tiny seeds that might germinate again if the rain falls. And even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor or pain, some bit of joy, a tear.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Memory Police

“أن العالم لا يدخل في دائرة المعتقد من غير أن يفقد اعتداله وصوابه، ولا فائدة من لومه على ذلك، فللمعتقد على المرء، أيًّا كان، سلطانٌ قاهر تتعذَّر مقاومته، والمعتقدات دائمة كانت أم مؤقتة هي أكثر العوامل تأثيرًا في حياة الشعوب، والشعب لا يتم حكمه بمبادئ حقيقية، بل بمعتقدات يؤمن بأنها حقيقية.”
― Gustave Le Bon, ‫الآراء والمعتقدات‬

“No one, not even a ‘friend,’ can make us better. But it is a great happiness in life to meet a person of quite different construction, different bent, completely dissimilar views who, while always remaining himself and in no wise echoing us nor currying favor with us (as sometimes happens) and not trying to insinuate his soul (and an insincere soul at that!) into our psyche, into our muddle, into our tangle, would stand as a firm wall, as a check to our follies and our irrationalities, which every human being has. Friendship lies in contradiction and not in agreement! Verily, God granted me Strakhov as a teacher and my friendship with him, my feelings for him were ever a kind of firm wall on which I felt I could always lean, or rather rest. And it won’t let you fall, and it gives warmth”
― Vasily Rozanov

“See," says he, "you who deny a providence, how many have been saved by their prayers to the Gods."
"Ay," says Diagoras, "I see those who were saved, but where are those painted who were shipwrecked”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero