B-san Al-Hallak > B-san's Quotes

“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.”
― Bob Marley

“There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.”
― Linda Grayson

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”
― Alfred Tennyson

“ركضنا طلبا للحياة و نحن نتمنى الموت”
― رضوى عاشور, الطنطورية

“My idea of good company...is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.'
'You are mistaken,' said he gently, 'that is not good company, that is the best.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“A man does not recover from such devotion of the heart to such a woman! He ought not; he does not.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

“I told you. You don't love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their car. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand.”
― L.J. Smith

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”
― Gautama Buddha, Sayings of Buddha

“I didn't fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way. I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we'd choose anyway. And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you”
― Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars

“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.”
― Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe

“Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.”
― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“And, in the end
The love you take
is equal to the love you make.”
― Paul McCartney, The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.”
― Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

“Conscience doth make cowards of us all.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“You say you felt a presence, but I only sensed an absence. A vague pain without a source. I was like a patient who cannot tell the doctor where it hurts, only that it does.”
― Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“نحن لا نكافئ الآخرين بغفراننا ذنوبهم، نحن نكافئ أنفسنا، ونتطهر من الداخل.”
― سعود السنعوسي, ساق البامبو

“الأديان أعظم من معتنقيها”
― سعود السنعوسي, ساق البامبو

“أُخفي الهوى ومدامعي تبديه
وأُميتُهُ وصبابتي تحييه
فكأنَّهُ بالحُسنِ صورةُ يوسفٍ
وكأنَّني بالحُزنِ مثل أبيه”
― ابن الفارض, ديوان ابن الفارض

“فالنازية في لبابها قائمة على خليقة الغرور؛ لأنها لن تقوم إن لم يقم معها غرور الزعيم بتفوقه على سائر الناس، وغرور العنصر بتفوقه على سائر العناصر، وغرور الأتباع بما يتاح لهم من مظاهر الزهو والخيلاء. والشيوعية في لبابها قائمة على خليقة الحسد؛ لأنك لا ترى شيوعيًّا إلا رأيته حاسدًا للممتازين من خلق الله كيفما كان سبيل الامتياز، وليس منهم من يشعر بالعطف على الضعيف أو الفقير، ولكنهم جميعًا يحقدون على القوي والغني وعلى كل صاحب فضل يشيد به الآخرون،”
― عباس محمود العقاد, ‫في بيتي‬

“فالأمة بغير علم أمة جاهلة، ولكنها قد تكون على جهلها وافية الخلق والشعور، والأمة بغير صناعة أمة تعوزها أداة العمل، ولكنها على هذا قد تكون صحيحة الحس صحيحة التفكير، والأمة بغير تعبير أمة مهزولة أو مشرفة على الموت، وكذلك تكون الأمم التي خلت من الفنون؛ لأن الفنون هي تعبير الأمم عن الحياة.”
― عباس محمود العقاد, ‫في بيتي‬

“كان الأقدمون يصورون ما يعلمون ويحسون، وكان الإحساسيون الصادقون يصورون ما يحسون ويشهدون، فجاء من بعدهم من يصورون ما يتوهمون، وجاء من بعد هؤلاء من يصورون ما يزعمون أنهم توهموه، وهم كاذبون.”
― عباس محمود العقاد, ‫في بيتي‬

“لماذا يكتب المؤلف ويطبع ما يكتب؟ للإفضاء بما في نفسه أو للكسب أو للشهرة؟ فإذا علمنا بعد هذا أن الذي يفضي بذات نفسه يفضي بها إلى من لا يجاوبه ولا يردد صداه، وأن الرغبة في المطالعة بيننا لم تبلغ إلى الآن أن تكفي كاتبًا واحدًا مؤنة الرزق، أو تغنيه عن مزاولة عمل يكفل له مطالب الحياة، وأن شهرة الكاتب الشرقي لا تتعدى عشرة آلاف قارئ على أكبر تقدير يقابلهم ألوف الألوف من قراء الكتاب الغربيين، إذا علمنا هذا فقد علمنا أنه ما من شيء يحبب إلى المؤلف أن يكتب في اللغة العربية، إذا ضمن الرواج في غيرها إلا غيرة الوطن، وغرام التضحية، وأمل في المستقبل يطول عليه الزمان، وتمطله الحوادث والصروف.”
― عباس محمود العقاد, ‫ساعات بين الكتب‬

“وأحسب أن عدد الذين يعنون بالمتنبي اليوم في العالم العربي أكبر من عدد الذين كانوا يعنون به في حياته، وأن المال الذي يدره ديوانه اليوم على طابعيه وبائعيه أكثر من المال الذي كان يدره على صاحبه وذويه، وأحسب أن قراء ملتون اليوم بين الإنجليز أعظم وأعرف بالأدب من قرائه على عهده، وأن قدره في أعينهم أرفع وأنبل من قدره بين من كان يسمعهم بلسانه نغمات فردوسه وصرخات فؤاده،”
― عباس محمود العقاد, ‫ساعات بين الكتب‬

“إن في كل أمة لغة كتابة ولغة حديث، وفي كل أمة لهجة تهذيب ولهجة ابتذال، وفي كل أمة كلام له قواعد وأصول، وكلام لا قواعد له ولا أصول، وسيظل الحال على هذا ما بقيت لغة وما بقي ناس يتمايزون في المدارك والأذواق،”
― عباس محمود العقاد, ‫ساعات بين الكتب‬