Quotes by Lebanese Authors - Page 7

We rarely consider that we're also formed by the decisions we didn't make, by events that could have happened but didn't, or by our lack of choices, for that matter.
Rabih Alameddine
My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity, especially when it comes to bureaucrats in a government who has no clueabout money matters
Ziad K. Abdelnour
I believe Government should encourage competition, NOT prop up the weak when the going gets tough.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
I believe Money is too important to leave in the hands of government officials.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
Why do people look to the government to fix the economy? It's mind-boggling.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
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
Always remember: When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
A theory is like medicine (or government): often useless, sometimes necessary, always self-serving, and on occasion lethal. So it needs to be used with care, moderation and close adult supervision.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Right or wrong. When you stand on a principle..you're never wrong.
Sandra Chami Kassis
Your children are not your children. They are sons and daughters of the Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts.
Kahlil Gibran
I no more believe in simplistic solutions than I do in simplistic identieties. The world is a complex machine that can't be dismantled with a srewdriver. But that shouldn't prevent us from observing, from trying to understand, from discussing, and sometimes suggesting a subject for reflection.
Amin Maalouf
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
Every individual is a meeting ground for many different allegiances, and sometimes these loyalties conflict with one another and confront the person who harbors them with difficult choices
Amin Maalouf
Nothing happens by mistake the universe has a divine plan...Stay attuned to it.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
What the fuck is legal in this universe? Stars eat each other, wolves eat the pigs, and Grandma fucks over Little Red Riding Hood.
Rawi Hage
There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.
Kahlil Gibran
Work hard in silence, let your success be your noise.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear — a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence. The "I" in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.
Kahlil Gibran
And let your board stand an altar on which the pure and the innocent of forest and plain are sacrificed for that which is purer and still more innocent in man.
Kahlil Gibran
Yes it's true, you wake the child inside of you up because you're a Mom!
Sandra Chami Kassis
Your children are not your children.They are 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 may give them your love but not your thoughts,For they have their own thoughts.You may house their bodies but not their souls,For thir souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.The archer sees the make upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness.For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He also loves the bow that is stable.
Kahlil Gibran
A writer who has perfect writing skills and zero honesty is not an author but a sales person.
Sandra Chami Kassis
Don’t be afraid to make people mad. Your honesty will inspire your true followers. I piss off tons of people every day.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
I believe "Leadership" is creating the environment for the greatness in people to emerge.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
It is usually the roughest road that leads to the heights of greatness.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
A million men can tell a woman she is beautiful, but the only time she will listen is when it's said by the man she loves.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
The only reason people hold onto memories is because memories are the only things that don't change, even when everyone else does.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
Nothing distinguishes memories from ordinary moments. Only later do they make themselves known, from their scars. - Chris Marker
Zeina Abirached
I learned over the years never to correct a fool or he will hate you; correct a wise man, and he will appreciate you.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
I have a yearning for my beautiful country, and I love its people because of their misery. But if my people rose, simulated by plunder and motivated by what they call "patriotic spirit" to murder, and invaded my neighbour's country, then upon the committing of any human atrocity I would hate my people and my country.
Kahlil Gibran
On Lou's lips a trace of pinot and out of them poured tales of acts of viciousness worthy of the great Lucifer himself, stories told through the night, the tortures, the beatings, the broken bones, every school has its Tigellinus, but his had more than one and each with followers, all-American boys who delighted in discovering how much pain a soul could withstand, two suicide attempts and all his parents and school could do was try to make Lou change his behavior, his behavior, his behavior, his, his, his, to modify his being just a bit. It gets better, Doc, fucking gets better, no one dared suggest that maybe the family and the school should change, or heaven forbid, that it was the all-Americans who should be modifying their beings, no, the homo should grin and bear it dumbly...
Rabih Alameddine
Entrepreneurs are selected to be just doers, not thinkers, and doers do, they don't talk.
Nicholas Nassim Taleb
It took us a while to discover that we do effectively think, but that we more readily narrate backward in order to give ourselves the illusion of understanding, and give a cover to our past actions.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
When you see a man led to prison say in your heart, "Mayhap he is escaping from a narrower prison." And when you see a man drunken say in your heart, "Mayhap he sought escape from something still more unbeautiful.
Kahlil Gibran
For man always looked to hire a fool to amuse him without knowing he was one all along.
Hanna Abi Akl
Always remember .... The people who usually hide their feelings care the most.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
When you beat up someone physically, you get excercise and stress relief; when you assault him verbally on the Internet, you just harm yourself.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Keep cool. Anger is not an argument.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
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
Litterature provides us with the opportunity to escape into fictional worlds that are ultimately rooted in human universals shaped by common biological forces.
Gad Saad
You may judge others only according to your knowledge of yourself.
Kahlil Gibran
Our education system is today run by left-wing elitists who believe the US is too big, too arrogant, and must be reigned-in... Real sad.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
Don’t promise when you’re happy, don’t reply when you’re angry, and don’t decide when you’re sad.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
We are the generation of Social Media, Our biggest Revolution is a Tweet of 141 Characters.
Sandra Chami Kassis
...These politically correct language initiatives are misguided and harmful. They create highly entitled professional “victims” who expect to be free from any offense, and they engender a stifling atmosphere where all individuals walk on eggshells lest they might commit a linguistic capital crime.
Gad Saad
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
Maturity comes with experience, not age.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
There are so many mistakes you can learn only by making them yourself. There is no substitute for experience.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams
Kahlil Gibran
The problem is never the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Think before you rush into action.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.
Kahlil Gibran
Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.For what is evil but good tortured by it’s 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
you are good when you strive to give of yourself.
Kahlil Gibran
You can only control so much, in the end the rest is up to fate.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
Whatever you do, do it with purpose. Being focused is not something to be ashamed of. It is something to be proud of. When you know what are you are doing and have a clear vision of where you are going, you will not need to chase opportunities. Opportunities will seek you. Happiness will chase you. And, instead of being a choice, you will be the one choosing.
Najwa Zebian
The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I beg your pardon, sir, said the Frenchman. I am not a coloniser.Well, let’s talk Algeria then. Let’s talk about your culture and your celebrated writers.
Rawi Hage
Not all writers are crazy. Only the ones who are serious enough about their craft.
Hanna Abi Akl