There either is or is not, that’s the way things are. The colour of the day. The way it felt to be a child. The saltwater on your sunburnt legs. Sometimes the water is yellow, sometimes it’s red. But what colour it may be in memory, depends on th...
I like to use the analogy of going to the gym. If you go to the gym and your goal is, 'I want to look just like David Beckham,' then that drives you to do certain things. You may never look like Beckham, but it is a goal. Cities need the same thing. ...
Though some may see their shortcomings as the greatest evil from the pit of hell, while some throw invectives at God for bringing them into a cruel, problematic world. These shortcomings are transient, the greatest evil does its work and needs no int...
The great majority of us are Muslims. We follow the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed (may peace be upon him). We are members of the brotherhood of Islam in which all are equal in rights, dignity and self-respect. Consequently, we have a special and ...
No map to help us find the tranquil flat lands, clearings calm, fields without mean fences. Rolling down the other side of life our compass is the sureness of ourselves. Time may make us rugged, ragged round the edges, but know and understand that lo...
Il y a dans l'exercice du pouvoir un moment particulièrement réussi, quand l'individu se soumet aux désirs des autres. Non seulement avec spontanéité mais avec une sensation de vertu... Le moment le plus jouissif c'est quand l'individu ne s'aper...
The peculiarities of my childhood, of constantly moving through so many different cultures, of always being the outsider, may have made me extraordinarily self-sufficient, but it had also bred a certain detachment, a sense that the world was a place ...
To write is to reveal oneself. When I write something, fiction or non-fiction, I do not expect you to accept what I write, nor to agree with what I propose. I expect you to spend at least a tenth of a second to think about it - may be not about the c...
God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness...
Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of -- for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. Th...
I may be just an empty flesh terminal reliant on technology for all my ideas, memories and relationships, but I am confident that all of that everything that makes me a unique human being is still out there somewhere, safe in a theoretical storage sp...
If we do find ET, we will at least have something in common with them. They may live on planet Zog and have seven tentacles, but they will be made of the same kinds of atoms as us. If they have eyes, they will gaze out on the same cosmos as we do. Th...
There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding. ... If you forgive, he would say,...
The difference between change and improvement is very easy to understand: change is temporary and improvement is permanent. Change is for a temporary feeling one may have due to circumstances. Improvement means to permanently change oneself in the na...
The saddest thing I have ever experienced is watching a fellow nerd I've known forever and befriended, trying to unnerdify themselves. It was painful because that great geeky personality I loved so much is hidden behind a plaster of trends, and he ma...
I don't want there to be this separation between the rich and poor. I may be part of the three percent because I've been fortunate and done well for myself, but I will never forget about the 97 percent. That was me growing up. I was so poor I dreamt ...
My father-in-law saw me at a dance performance. The next day, I got a phone call, and the caller said, 'I'm Dhirubhai Ambani... may I talk to Nita?' I said, 'It's a wrong number' and put down the phone. Then he called again... and I said, 'If you're ...
Our ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, increasing knowledge, and an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare i...
While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all things because He knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of thanksgiving.
The chief problem about death, incidentally, is the fear that there may be no afterlife - a depressing thought, particularly for those who bothered to shave. Also, there is the fear that there is an afterlife but no one will know where it's being hel...
With 'Ilustrado,' I set out to change the way we read literature, and I think I failed spectacularly. In fact, I know I failed. In reaching further than I could, I may not have produced a life- or literature-changing book, but I did produce one I am ...
