Sheila > Sheila's Quotes

“Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome. The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“For the developing world, the past half-century has been a time of recurring hope and frequent disappointment. Great waves of change have washed over the landscape, from the crumbling of colonial hegemonies in mid-century to the recent collapse of Communist empires. But too often, what rushed in to replace the old order were empty hopes-not only in the false allure of state socialism, non-alignment and single-party rule, but also the false glories of romantic nationalism and narrow tribalism, and the false dawn of runaway individualism.”
― Aga Khan

“For too long some of our schools have taught too many subjects as subsets of dogmatic commitments...Too often, education made our students less flexible- confident to the point of arrogance that they now had all the answers- rather than more flexible- humble in their lifelong openness to new questions and new responses. An important goal of quality education is to equip each generation to participate effectively in what has been called 'the great conversation' of our times. This means, on one hand, being unafraid of controversy. But, on the other hand, it also means being sensitive to the values and outlooks of others.”
― Aga Khan, Where Hope Takes Root: Democracy and Pluralism in an Interdependent World

“Oh, Life, I am yours. Whatever it is you want of me, I am ready to give.”
― William Steig, Dominic

“What is History? Any thoughts, Webster?'
'History is the lies of the victors," I replied, a little too quickly.
'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated.”
― Julian Barnes

“History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“Of course, you never really forget anyone, but you certainly release them. You stop allowing their history to have any meaning for you today. You let them change their haircut, let them move, let them fall in love again. And when you see this person you have let go, you realize that there is no reason to be sad. The person you knew exists somewhere, but you are separated by too much time to reach them again.”
― Chelsea Fagan

“Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.”
― John Hodgman

“There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body's sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. 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. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring barque,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.”
― William Shakespeare, Great Sonnets

“So it's not gonna be easy. It's going to be really hard; we're gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me... everyday.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

“I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest -- blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“So how can we improve the educational system? We should probably first rethink school curricula, and link them in more obvious ways to social goals (elimination of poverty and crime, elevation of human rights, etc.), technological goals (boosting energy conservation, space exploration, nanotechnology, etc.), and medical goals (cures for cancer, diabetes, obesity, etc.) that we care about as a society. This way the students, teachers, and parents might see the larger point in education and become more enthusiastic and motivated about it. We should also work hard on making education a goal in itself, and stop confusing the number of hours students spend in school with the quality of the education they get. Kids can get excited about many things (baseball, for example), and it is our challenge as a society to make them want to know as much about Nobel laureates as they now know about baseball players. I am not suggesting that igniting a social passion for education is simple; but if we succeed in doing so, the value could be immense.”
― Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

“All humans make mistakes. What determines a person's character aren't the mistakes we make. It's how we take those mistakes and turn them into lessons rather than excuses.”
― Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us

“Drawing upon first-hand accounts from my own journey to the Muslim world – and primary and secondary scholarship when necessary – this book offers an anthropological window into Muslim piety in the early 21st century. In doing so, it is hoped that discussions concerning multiplicity in Muslim space and ritual, and Islam more widely, become more nuanced and more inclusive.”
― Rizwan Mawani, Beyond the Mosque: Diverse Spaces of Muslim Worship

“This is similarly reflected in the Hinduism of the West Indies (the leading religion amongst Indo-Caribbeans) and that of Bali, Indonesia. Further accentuating the diversity of each culture is the majoritarian context of one and the minoritarian context of the other. While one case consists of transplanted migrant communities that have found ways for their traditions to consciously speak through an adopted culture, the other exists as a community on an island surrounded by an archipelago of the largest Muslim population in the world. Given this evident diversity within religions, it is only to be expected that Islam – one of today’s major world religions, with over 1.5 billion adherents – is no exception.”
― Rizwan Mawani, Beyond the Mosque: Diverse Spaces of Muslim Worship

“Muslims form a global community (umma) united by a common belief and value system as decreed by God. Essential to this system is the recognition of the Qur’an as God’s final message to mankind revealed through His Prophet, Muhammad (ca. 571–632), via the archangel Gabriel. The vast differences in how Islam takes form arise because of the ways in which the Qur’anic text is interpreted by communities and cultures, each with their own trajectories of history, experience and understanding”
― Rizwan Mawani, Beyond the Mosque: Diverse Spaces of Muslim Worship