Hasan > Hasan's Quotes

“If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“The Idiot. I have read it once, and find that I don't remember the events of the book very well--or even all the principal characters. But mostly the 'portrait of a truly beautiful person' that dostoevsky supposedly set out to write in that book. And I remember how Myshkin seemed so simple when I began the book, but by the end, I realized how I didn't understand him at all. the things he did. Maybe when I read it again it will be different. But the plot of these dostoevsky books can hold such twists and turns for the first-time reader-- I guess that's b/c he was writing most of these books as serials that had to have cliffhangers and such.
But I make marks in my books, mostly at parts where I see the author's philosophical points standing in the most stark relief. My copy of Moby Dick is positively full of these marks. The Idiot, I find has a few...
Part 3, Section 5. The sickly Ippolit is reading from his 'Explanation' or whatever its called. He says his convictions are not tied to him being condemned to death. It's important for him to describe, of happiness: "you may be sure that Columbus was happy not when he had discovered America, but when he was discovering it." That it's the process of life--not the end or accomplished goals in it--that matter. Well. Easier said than lived!
Part 3, Section 6. more of Ippolit talking--about a christian mindset. He references Jesus's parable of The Word as seeds that grow in men, couched in a description of how people are interrelated over time; its a picture of a multiplicity.
Later in this section, he relates looking at a painting of Christ being taken down from the cross, at Rogozhin's house. The painting produced in him an intricate metaphor of despair over death "in the form of a huge machine of the most modern construction which, dull and insensible, has aimlessly clutched, crushed, and swallowed up a great priceless Being, a Being worth all nature and its laws, worth the whole earth, which was created perhaps solely for the sake of the advent of this Being." The way Ippolit's ideas are configured, here, reminds me of the writings of Gilles Deleuze. And the phrasing just sort of remidns me of the way everyone feels--many people feel crushed by the incomprehensible machine, in life. Many people feel martyred in their very minor ways. And it makes me think of the concept that a narrative religion like Christianity uniquely allows for a kind of socialized or externalized, shared experience of subjectivity. Like, we all know the story of this man--and it feels like our own stories at the same time.
Part 4, Section 7. Myshkin's excitement (leading to a seizure) among the Epanchin's dignitary guests when he talks about what the nobility needs to become ("servants in order to be leaders"). I'm drawn to things like this because it's affirming, I guess, for me: "it really is true that we're absurd, that we're shallow, have bad habits, that we're bored, that we don't know how to look at things, that we can't understand; we're all like that." And of course he finds a way to make that into a good thing. which, it's pointed out by scholars, is very important to Dostoevsky philosophy--don't deny the earthly passions and problems in yourself, but accept them and incorporate them into your whole person. Me, I'm still working on that one.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“...A word I want to see written on my grave: I am alive like you, and I am standing beside you. Close your eyes and look around, you will see me in front of you.”
― Words written beside Kahil Gibran's grave.

“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“At sunrise, the blue sky paints herself with gold colors and joyfully dances to the music of a morning breeze.”
― Debasish Mridha

“Sunrise paints the sky with pinks and the sunset with peaches. Cool to warm. So is the progression from childhood to old age.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Ô, Sunlight! The most precious gold to be found on Earth.”
― Roman Payne

“It has been my observation that women are indeed crucial agents of change in the Arab world. I have always been impressed by their more progressive and enlightened thinking on the issues affecting Arab society. This was particularly true of the Iraqi women with whom I worked in Baghdad from June 2003 to January 2004. Far more sensible and realistic than the men, they are the key to cultural and political change in their world.”
― Raphael Patai, The Arab Mind

“Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore, trust the physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility.”
― Khalil Gibran

“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.”
― Sir Francis Bacon

“I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.”
― Albert Einstein

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Even if you cannot change all the people around you, you can change the people you choose to be around. Life is too short to waste your time on people who don’t respect, appreciate, and value you. Spend your life with people who make you smile, laugh, and feel loved.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

“Be your friend’s
true friend.
Return gift for gift.
Repay laughter
with laughter again
but betrayal with treachery.”
― Hávamál

“دواؤك فيك وما تُبصر وداؤك منك وما تَشعر
وَ تزعم أنك جرمٌ صغير،،وفيك انطوى العالمُ الأكبرُ”
― علي بن أبي طالب

“Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction”
― Pablo Picasso

“Everything you can imagine is real.”
― Pablo Picasso

“The more the drive toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”
― Nikola Tesla

“Acquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility.”
― William Osler

“The trouble with these people is that their cities have never been bombed and their mothers have never been told to shut up.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

“أطلب العلم ولا تكسـل فمـا
أبعد الخير على أهـل الكسـل
واحتفل للفقه فـي الديـن ولا
تشتغل عنـه بمـالٍ وخَـوَل
واهجر النوم وحصّلـه فمـن
يعرف المطلوب يحقر ما بذل
لا تقـل قـد ذهبـت أربابـه
كلّ من سار على الدرب وصل
في ازدياد العلم إرغام العـدى
وجمال العلم إصـلاح العمـل”
― ابن الوردي

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Socrates

“بقدر الكد تكتسب المعالى ومن طلب العلا سهر الليالى
ومن رام العلا من غير كد اضاع العمر فى طلب المحال
تروم العز ثم تنام ليــــــلا يغوص البحر من طلب اللألى”
― الأمام الشافعى