Muhammad A > Muhammad's Quotes

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  • #1
    Richard de Bury
    “Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money.
    If you approach them, they are not asleep; If you seek them, they do not hide;
    If you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.”
    Richard de Bury, The Love of Books: The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury

  • #3
    Leo F. Buscaglia
    “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”
    Leo Buscaglia

  • #4
    Sultan Bahu
    “Through study and learning they earn the pleasure of princes-
    What comes of such learning?
    Butter never rises from boiling sour milk.
    Speak bird! What do you yearn by pecking newly sprouted grain?
    Nursing one broken heart, Bahu, is equal to the worship of many years.”
    Sultan Bahu

  • #5
    “Charity does not mean doing good to him who does good to you, for this is to return good for good. Charity means that you should do good to him who does you harm”
    Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version

  • #7
    “May the blind see the forms,
    May the deaf hear sounds.

    May the naked find clothing,
    The hungry find food;
    May the thirsty find water
    And delicious drinks.

    May the poor find wealth,
    Those weak with sorrow find joy;
    May the forlorn find new hope,
    Constant happiness and prosperity.

    May the frightened cease to be afraid
    And those bound be freed;
    May the powerless find power,
    And may the people think of benefiting one another”
    Shantideva

  • #9
    ایرج میرزا
    “They say, that when I was born,
    my mother taught me to suck the milk.
    And every night beside my crib,
    she taught me to sleep as soft as silk.
    With a smile she pressed her lips to mine,
    till my mouth with joy oversplit.
    She took my hand and guided my foot,
    till I learned to walk with a happy lilt.
    One word, two words, then three and more...
    that's how she taught me to talk.
    That's why my life is part of her life,
    and will remain so as long as I live”
    Iraj Mirza Persian Poet

  • #10
    Carlos Ruiz Zafón
    “Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.”
    Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

  • #11
    Jorge Luis Borges
    “Let no one reduce to tears or reproach
    This statement of the mastery of God,
    Who, with magnificent irony, gave
    Me at once both books and night

    Of this city of books He pronounced rulers
    These lightless eyes, who can only
    Peruse in libraries of dreams
    The insensible paragraphs that yield

    With every new dawn. Vainly does the day
    Lavish on them its infinite books,
    Arduous as the arduous manuscripts
    Which at Alexandria did perish.

    Of hunger and thirst (a Greek story tells us)
    Dies a king amidst fountains and gardens;
    I aimlessly weary at the confines
    Of this tall and deep blind library.

    Encyclopedias, atlases, the East
    And the West, centuries, dynasties
    Symbols, cosmos and cosmogonies
    Do walls proffer, but pointlessly.

    Slow in my shadow, I the hollow shade
    Explore with my indecisive cane;
    To think I had imagined Paradise
    In the form of such a library.

    Something, certainly not termed
    Fate, rules on such things;
    Another had received in blurry
    Afternoons both books and shadow.

    Wandering through these slow corridors
    I often feel with a vague and sacred dread
    That I am another, the dead one, who must
    Have trodden the same steps at the same time.

    Which of the two is now writing this poem
    Of a plural I and of a single shadow?
    How important is the word that names me
    If the anathema is one and indivisible?

    Groussac or Borges, I see this darling
    World deform and extinguish
    To a pale, uncertain ash
    Resembling sleep and oblivion”
    Jorge Luis Borges

  • #12
    Alexander Pushkin
    “Bound for your distant home"

    Bound for your distant home
    you were leaving alien lands.
    In an hour as sad as I’ve known
    I wept over your hands.
    My hands were numb and cold,
    still trying to restrain
    you, whom my hurt told
    never to end this pain.

    But you snatched your lips away
    from our bitterest kiss.
    You invoked another place
    than the dismal exile of this.
    You said, ‘When we meet again,
    in the shadow of olive-trees,
    we shall kiss, in a love without pain,
    under cloudless infinities.’

    But there, alas, where the sky
    shines with blue radiance,
    where olive-tree shadows lie
    on the waters glittering dance,
    your beauty, your suffering,
    are lost in eternity.
    But the sweet kiss of our meeting ......
    I wait for it: you owe it me .......”
    Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

  • #13
    José Zorrilla
    “Leave me in Granada in the middle of paradise where my soul wells with poetry;
    Leave me until my time comes and I may intone a fitting song.
    Yes, I want my memorial stone in this land.
    Granada! Holy place of the glory of Spain,
    Your mountains are the white tents of pavilions,
    Your walls are the circle of a vase of flowers,
    Your plain a Moorish shawl embroidered with colour,
    Your towers are palm trees that imprison you”
    Jose Zorilla

  • #14
    “Perverse times have come
    The mystery of the Beloved to reveal

    Crows have begun to hunt hawks,
    Sparrows have vanquished falcons.
    Horse browse on rubbish,
    Donkeys graze on lush green.
    No love is lost between relatives,
    Be they younger or older uncles.

    There is no accord between fathers and sons,
    nor any between mothers and daughters.
    The truthful ones are being pushed about,
    the tricksters are seated close by,
    the front-liners have become wretched,
    the backbenchers sit on carpets.
    Those in taters have turned into Kings,
    The Kings have taken to begging.
    Oh Bullah, comes the command from the Lord,
    who can ever alter His decree?

    Perverse times have come,
    The mystery of the beloved to reveal”
    Bullhe Shāh

  • #15
    Slavoj Žižek
    “Liberal attitudes towards the other are characterized both by respect for otherness, openness to it, and an obsessive fear of harassment. In short, the other is welcomed insofar as its presence is not intrusive, insofar as it is not really the other. Tolerance thus coincides with its opposite. My duty to be tolerant towards the other effectively means that I should not get too close to him or her, not intrude into his space—in short, that I should respect his intolerance towards my over-proximity. This is increasingly emerging as the central human right of advanced capitalist society: the right not to be ‘harassed’, that is, to be kept at a safe distance from others.”
    Slavoj Žižek, Against Human Rights

  • #16
    نزار قباني
    “Jerusalem! My Love,My Town

    I wept until my tears were dry
    I prayed until the candles flickered
    I knelt until the floor creaked
    I asked about Mohammed and Christ
    Oh Jerusalem, the fragrance of prophets
    The shortest path between earth and sky
    Oh Jerusalem, the citadel of laws
    A beautiful child with fingers charred
    and downcast eyes
    You are the shady oasis passed by the Prophet
    Your streets are melancholy
    Your minarets are mourning
    You, the young maiden dressed in black
    Who rings the bells at the Nativity Church,
    On sunday morning?
    Who brings toys for the children
    On Christmas eve?
    Oh Jerusalem, the city of sorrow
    A big tear wandering in the eye
    Who will halt the aggression
    On you, the pearl of religions?
    Who will wash your bloody walls?
    Who will safeguard the Bible?
    Who will rescue the Quran?
    Who will save Christ, From those who have killed Christ?
    Who will save man?
    Oh Jerusalem my town
    Oh Jerusalem my love
    Tomorrow the lemon trees will blossom
    And the olive trees will rejoice
    Your eyes will dance
    The migrant pigeons will return
    To your sacred roofs
    And your children will play again
    And fathers and sons will meet
    On your rosy hills
    My town
    The town of peace and olives”
    Nizar Qabbani

  • #17
    Thomas   Moore
    “DOST thou not hear the silver bell,
    Through yonder lime-trees ringing?
    'Tis my lady's light gazelle.
    To me her love thoughts bringing, —
    All the while that silver bell
    Around his dark neck ringing.”
    Thomas Moore

  • #18
    Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
    “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
    Rumi

  • #19
    Ali bin Uthman Al-Hujwiri
    “Once Ibrahim bin Adham saw a stone with the inscription, "Turn me over and read!" When he did an inscription appeared: "You do not practice what you know. Why do you seek what you do not know?”
    Al-Hujwiri

  • #20
    Lao Tzu
    “Love

    Embracing Tao, you become embraced.
    Supple, breathing gently, you become reborn.
    Clearing your vision, you become clear.
    Nurturing your beloved, you become impartial.
    Opening your heart, you become accepted.
    Accepting the World, you embrace Tao.
    Bearing and nurturing,
    Creating but not owning,
    Giving without demanding,
    Controlling without authority,
    This is love.”
    Laozi, The Teachings of Lao-Tzu: The Tao-Te Ching
    tags: love

  • #21
    Jonathan Safran Foer
    “Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?”
    Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

  • #22
    “When you are attracted to, and eat, fruits, occasionally a seed will be carried within you to a fertile ground.”
    David Wolfe, The Sunfood Diet Success System

  • #24
    “Acknowledgements!
    My thanks to Hollywood
    When you showed me John Rambo
    Stitching up his arm with no anaesthetic
    And giving them “a war they won’t believe”
    I knew then my calling, the job for me

    Thanks also to the recruitment adverts
    For showing me soldiers whizzing around on skis
    And for sending sergeants to our school
    To tell us of the laughs, the great food, the pay
    The camaraderie

    I am, dear taxpayer, forever in your debt
    You paid for my all-inclusive pilgrimage
    One year basking in the Garden of Eden
    (I haven’t quite left yet)

    Thanks to Mum and thanks to Dad
    Fuck it,
    Thanks to every parent
    Flushing with pride for their brave young lads
    Buying young siblings toy guns and toy tanks
    Waiting at the airport
    Waving their flags”
    Danny Martin

  • #25
    Wilfred Owen
    “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
    Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
    Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
    And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
    Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
    But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
    Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
    Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

    GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
    Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
    But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
    And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
    Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
    As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

    In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
    He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

    If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
    Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
    And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
    His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
    If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
    Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
    Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
    Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
    My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
    To children ardent for some desperate glory,
    The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
    Pro patria mori.”
    Wilfred Owen, The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen

  • #26
    William Blake
    “And did those feet in ancient time
    Walk upon England's mountains green?
    And was the holy Lamb of God
    On England's pleasant pastures seen?

    And did the Countenance Divine
    Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
    And was Jerusalem builded here,
    Among these dark Satanic Mills?

    Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
    Bring me my Arrows of desire:
    Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
    Bring me my Chariot of fire!

    I will not cease from Mental Fight,
    Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand,
    Till we have built Jerusalem
    In England's green & pleasant Land.”
    William Blake, Milton: A Poem

  • #28
    Abdul Salam Zaeef
    “This “freedom” put a proud people in chains
    And turned free men into slaves
    “Independence” made us weak
    And slaughtered us
    In the name of kindness
    This is democracy by the whip
    And the fear of chains
    With a whirlwind at its core”
    Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, My Life with the Taliban

  • #29
    Edgar A. Guest
    “Father!
    My father knows the proper way
    The nation should be run;
    He tells us children every day
    Just what should now be done.
    He knows the way to fix the trusts,
    He has a simple plan;
    But if the furnace needs repairs,
    We have to hire a man.
    My father, in a day or two
    Could land big thieves in jail;
    There's nothing that he cannot do,
    He knows no word like "fail."
    "Our confidence" he would restore,
    Of that there is no doubt;
    But if there is a chair to mend,
    We have to send it out.

    All public questions that arise,
    He settles on the spot;
    He waits not till the tumult dies,
    But grabs it while it's hot.
    In matters of finance he can
    Tell Congress what to do;
    But, O, he finds it hard to meet
    His bills as they fall due.

    It almost makes him sick to read
    The things law-makers say;
    Why, father's just the man they need,
    He never goes astray.
    All wars he'd very quickly end,
    As fast as I can write it;
    But when a neighbor starts a fuss,
    'Tis mother has to fight it.

    In conversation father can
    Do many wondrous things;
    He's built upon a wiser plan
    Than presidents or kings.
    He knows the ins and outs of each
    And every deep transaction;
    We look to him for theories,
    But look to ma for action”
    Edgar Albert Guest



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