3mmar

“I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“في العشرين كنت كالمسافر الموعود في رحلته بأمتع المناظر وأعجب المفاجآت، فلا يزال يعرض عما يراه لأنه دون ما كان ينتظر ويتخيل، ولا يزال مستهيناً بالحاضر أملاً فيما يليه. أو أنني كنت في العشرين كالجالس على المائدة وهو يظن أن أطايب الطعام لا تزال مؤخرة محجوزة، لأنه لم يجد أمامه طعاماً يستحق الاقبال فهو لهذا يصيب منها القليل ويعف عن الكثير، ويزهد فيما بين يديه ويتشوق لما بعده.”
― عباس محمود العقاد, أنا

“While I thus cogitate in disquiet and perplexity, half submerged in dark waters of a well in an Arabian oasis, I suddenly hear a voice from the background of my memory, the voice of an old Kurdish nomad: If water stands motionless in a pool it grows stale and muddy, but when it moves and flows it becomes clear: so, too, man in his wanderings. Whereupon, as if by magic, all disquiet leaves me. I begin to look upon myself with distant eyes, as you might look at the pages of a book to read a story from them; and I begin to understand that my life could not have taken a different course. For when I ask myself, 'What is the sum total of my life?' somthing in me seems to answer, 'You have set out to exchange one world for another-to gain a new world for yourself in exchange for an old one which you never really possessed.' And I know with startling clarity that such an undertaking might indeed take an entire lifetime.”
― Muhammad Asad

“Indians are the Italians of Asia and vice versa. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is the music inside the body and music is the food inside the heart. Amore or Pyar makes every man a poet, a princess of peasant girl if only for second eyes of man and woman meets.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram