Quotes by Lebanese Authors - Page 11

In my dreams, I entered a world where success was based on ethics and proper dealings, not bribes and scams. My vision of sucess including marrying Sophia, having joyful children, unassuming friends, and warmhearted neighbors. I aspired for an environment where I would be valued for my good character, not the strength of my aggression. I wanted to leave West Beirut, the four square miles of a lesser world.
Sam Wazan
Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Look how many of our young are ill prepared to enter adult life today. This was designed by progressives to create government dependency.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
Surely you know that pleasure soon evaporates, into thin air?Then all we are left with are stories.
Hanan Al-Shaykh
As you grow older, you realize it becomes less important to have more friends and more important to have real ones.People nowadays don't know the true meaning of friendship and loyalty.People always suddenly miss you more once they see how much happier you are without them.Learn the real from the fake....and don't worry about the mistakes you make.There are no mistakes in life, just lessons.The only people worthy to be in your life are the ones that help you through the hard times and laugh with you after the hard times pass.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
Always Remember... Once You Give Up Your Rights, You Can Never Get Them Back. Once You Turn On That Police State, You Can Never Turn It Off.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
Smile, my beloved, like the gold smiles from my father's coffers.
Kahlil Gibran
Should you care to write (and only the saints know why you should) you must needs have knowledge and art and magic - the knowledge of the music of words, the art of being artless, and the magic of loving your readers.
Kahil Gibran
The world is for you and for the ones who roll out the carpet, even if it's tattered. They're scattered all over. And if you look carefully, they can help you find your way home, wherever you are.
Salma Abdelnour
Challenge conventional wisdom. There is almost always a better way.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
I was always alone, Doc, solitary whether I wished to be or not, ever since I could remember I wished to be lost in another, thought that somehow I could disappear into that heart of yours, take walks within your veins, wander through the bones of you. You had friends, Satan said, you loved and were loved, you must not forget that, at least not that. But did I allow anyone in, I asked Satan, and he said, Did you, does anyone?
Rabih Alameddine
Never let success get to your head and never let failure get to your heart.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
For the sight of the angry weather saddens my soul and the sight of the town, sitting like a bereaved mother beneath layers of ice, oppresses my heart.
Kahlil Gibran
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and melt into the sun?
Kahlil Gibran
Beauty is a thing of might and dread.Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.
Kahlil Gibran
The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.For self is a sea boundless and measureless.Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.”Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”For the soul walks upon all paths.The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.
Kahlil Gibran
When you were a wandering desire in the mist, I too was there, a wandering desire. Then we sought one another, and out of our eagerness dreams were born. And dreams were time limitless, and dreams were space without measure.
Kahlil Gibran
He who is more mindful of one, loses the love and the faith of both.
Kahlil Gibran
Like all cities, Beirut has many layers, and I had been familiar with one or two. What I was introduced to that day with Ali and Kamal was the Beirut of its people. You take different groups, put them on top of each other, simmer for a thousand years, keep adding more and more strange tribes, simmer for another few thousand years, salt and pepper with religion, and what you get is a delightful mess of a stew that still tastes delectable and exotic, no matter how many times you partake of it.
Rabih Alameddine
Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.
Kahlil Gibran
Love without sacrifice is like theft
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
the desperate need to belong is perhaps never as great as during adolescence. Advertisers seek to communicate with teenagers by frequently using that powerful appeal.
Gad Saad
Affordable Care Act" roll out isn't Obama's fault. It's what happens when you elect a President without any real-world business experience.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
If the past, by bringing surprises, did not resemble the past previous to it (what I call the past's past), then why should our future resemble our current past?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.
Kahlil Gibran
Myth: Feeding the banking sector gobs of welfare cash will bring about a recovery. Fact: Our leaders are only dedicated to preserving power
Ziad K. Abdelnour
There's a huge misconception that innovation is mostly about inventing or coming up with cool new things. More often than not, innovation is about figuring out what people really need or want but can't have or afford.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
Dig anywhere in the earth and you will find a treasure, only you must dig with the faith of a peasant.
Kahlil Gibran
Real problems in life are those related to your wellbeing and the wellbeing of your loved ones... Everything else is NOT a problem!
Samer Chidiac
You pray in your distress and in your need would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.
Kahlil Gibran
Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Shall I come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.
Kahlil Gibran
Sometimes being too nice is dangerous, you have to show your mean side once in a while to avoid getting hurt.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
A prophet is not someone who first had an idea. He is the one to first believe in it and take it to its conclusion.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I believe the people who are most successful are those committed to bringing out the best in other people through awakening & empowerment.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart:Your seeds shall live in my body,And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart,And your fragrance shall be my breath,And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons.
Kahlil Gibran
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Kahlil Gibran
Your children are not your children.They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.They come through you but not from you,And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.You might give them your love but not your thoughts,For they have their own thoughts.
Kahlil Gibran
Taking the line of least resistance, we lump the most different people together under the same heading. Taking the line of least resistance, we ascribe to them collective crimes, collective acts and opinions. "The Serbs have massacred…", "The English have devastated…", "The Jews have confiscated…", "The Blacks have torched", "The Arabs refuse…". We blithely express sweeping judgments on whole peoples, calling them "hardworking" and "ingenious", or "lazy", "touchy", "sly", "proud", or "obstinate". And sometimes this ends in bloodshed." – Amin Maalouf "On Identity
Amin Maalouf
How much more infinite a sea is man? Be not so childish as to measure him from head to foot and think you have found his borders.
Mikhail Naimy
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.
Kahlil Gibran
What is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?
Kahlil Gibran
Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit
Kahlil Gibran
Forgetfulness is a form of freedom.
Kahlil Gibran
Can we reconcile indefinitely these two imperatives: the desire to preserve every individual's special identity and the need for Europeans to be able to communicate with one another all the time and as freely as possible? We cannot leave it to time to solve the dilemma and prevent people from engaging, a few years hence, in bitter and fruitless linguistic conflicts. We know all too well what time will do.The only possible answer is a voluntary policy aimed at strengthening linguistic diversity and based on a simple idea: nowadays everybody obviously needs three languages. The first is his language of identity; the third is English. Between the two we have to promote a third language, freely chosen, which will often but not always be another European language. This will be for everyone the main foreign language taught at school, but it will also be much more than that--the language of the heart, the adopted language, the language you have married, the language you love.
Amin Maalouf
...I wondered at times whether I would wake up and this would be just a bad dream, a nightmare that I could wish away, I had the same fantasy when you were sick, Doc, that I would one day wake up and you all would be healthy and alive.
Rabih Alameddine
You have three types of friends in life: Friends for a reason, friends for a season, and friends for a lifetime.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
you are good when you strive to give of yourself.
Kahlil Gibran
If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?
Kahlil Gibran
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone.Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Kahlil Gibran
If you keep fighting with yourself, you will always win.
Samer Chidiac
Never blame anyone in life. The good people give you happiness. The worst people give you a lesson. The best people give you memories.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
The Reality of The Other Person Lies Not In What He Reveals To You, But What He Cannot Reveal To You.Therefore, If You Would Understand Him, Listen Not To What He Says, But Rather To What He Does Not Say.
Kahlil Gibran
People sometimes imagine that just because they have access to so many newspapers, radio and TV channels, they will get an infinity of different opinions. Then they discover that things are just the opposite: the power of these loudspeakers only amplifies the opinion prevalent at a certain time, to the point where it covers any other opinion.
Amin Maalouf
You could read a dozen large tomes on the history of Islam from its very beginnings and you still wouldn't understand what is going on in Algeria. But read 30 pages on colonialism and decolonisation and then you'll understand quite a lot.
Amin Maalouf
Never make fun of people who are different...unless they have more money, power and influence. Then you must.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
Entrepreneurs are selected to be just doers, not thinkers, and doers do, they don't talk.
Nicholas Nassim Taleb
Then a ploughman said , speak to us of work : in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life ,And to love life throught labour is to be intimate with inmost secrets .And what is it to work with love ?it is to weave the colth with threads from your heart , even as if your beloved were to wear that colth .It is to build a house with affection , even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house .It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy , even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit .It is to change all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit .He who works in marble , and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone , is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
Kahlil Gibran
Friendship is always a sweet responsibility never an opportunity.
Kahlil Gibran
Beirut is the Elizabeth Taylor of cities: insane, beautiful, falling apart, aging, and forever drama laden.She'll also marry any infatuated suitor who promises to make her life more comfortable, no matter how inappropriate he is.
Rabih Alameddine