Top 80 Quotes & Sayings by Naguib Mahfouz - Page 2

A priest's life is spent between question and answer-- or between a question and the attempt to answer it. The question is the summary of the spiritual life.

When you spend time with your friends, what do you talk about? Those things which made an impression on you that day, that week ... I write stories the same way. Events at home, in school, at work, in the street, these are the bases for a story. Some experiences leave such a deep impression that instead of talking about them at the club I work them into a novel.

For the first time in my life, I felt that a wave, a justice was sweeping away a deep-seated decay without any indulgence. I dearly wished that it would keep going without hesitation or deviation, in a spirit of purity forever.

Literature should be more revolutionary than revolutions themselves; writers must find the means to continue to be critical of the negative elements in the sociopolitical reality.

Writing is for men who can think and feel, not mindless sensation seekers out of nightclubs and bars. But these are bad times. We are condemned to work with upstarts, clowns who no doubt got their training in a circus and then turned to journalism as the appropriate place to display their tricks.

Art is a criticism of society and life, and I believe that if life became perfect, art would be meaningless and cease to exist.

paraphrasing.."Science is the language of the intellect of society. Art is language of the entire human personality.

"Death by love is fairer by far than death by illness", said Amenhotep III.

I was afraid of marriage. I had the impression married life would take up all my time. I saw myself drowning in visits and parties. No freedom.

Visit me once each year, for it's wrong to abandon people forever.

I believe in life and in people. I feel obliged to advocate their highest ideals as long as I believe them to be true. I also see myself compelled to revolt against ideals I believe to be false, since recoiling from rebellion would be a form of treason

Happy is he who can give himself up.

The calendar has a magic that makes us imagine a memory can be resurrected and revived, but nothing returns.

It's not surprising that truly humanitarian manifestos originate frequently in minority circles or with people whose consciences are troubled by the problems of minorities.

In the calculus of good deeds you have the most to gain.

The real malady is fear of life, not of death

I am the son of two civilizations that at a certain age in history have formed a happy marriage. The first of these, seven thousand years old, is the Pharaonic civilization; the second, one thousand four hundred years old, is the Islamic civilization.

The heart is a place of secrets.

When will the state of the country be sound?... When its people believe that the end result of cowardice is more disastrous than that of behaving with integrity.

He seemed to be waiting for a miracle to save him from the depths his life had reached and take him to a land of dreams.