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Mais Atassi
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“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
― Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe
― Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe
“In short, Israel is the measure of our failings and our incompetence. We have waited for a great leader for years, but none came; we have waited for a mighty military victory, but we were defeated roundly; we have waited for outside powers (the US or,in its time, the Soviet Union), but none came to our aid. The one thing we have not tried in all seriousness is to rely on OURSELVES: until we do that with a full commitment to success there is no chance that we can advance towards self-determination and freedom from aggression.-1998”
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“exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile’s life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement.”
― Reflections on Exile and Other Essays
― Reflections on Exile and Other Essays
“A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.”
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that's alive. My self does not differ substantially from yours in terms of its thought. Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of egocentrism.”
― Immortality
― Immortality
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Forum for spirited and convivial discussion of fiction from around the world, with particular though not exclusive focus on 20th and 21st century fict ...more
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رابطة قراء سوريا!!. في كل دول العالم هناك اتحادات للكتاب.. ولكن لا يوجد أي اتحاد للقراء.. ومن المعلوم أن أي شيء يكون مهدداً بالانقراض.. تشكل له جمعيات ...more
Mais’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Mais’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
632 books
|
21 friends
184 books
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70 friends
179 books
|
131 friends
1,863 books
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278 friends
789 books
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1,511 friends
734 books
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78 friends
233 books
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192 friends
2,427 books
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1,728 friends
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