Top 20 Quotes & Sayings by Nazim Hikmet

And don't forget, a prisoner's wife must always think good thoughts.

Living is no laughing matter: you must live with great seriousness like a squirrel for example - I mean without looking for something beyond and above living, I mean living must be your whole occupation.

However and wherever we are, we must live as if we will never die.

That's how it goes, my friend. The problem is not falling a captive, it's how to avoid surrender.

Looking at this insolent earth, you hear the first battle cry of our species- trap it under a rock and together, screaming, attack and destroy it, as if killing a mammoth.

We'll dive into the earth together. And if one day a wild flower finds water and springs up from that piece of earth, its stem will have two blooms for sure: one will be you, the other me.

The strangest of our powers Is the courage to live Knowing that we will die, Knowing nothing more true.

I'm only seven, although I died In Hiroshima long ago, I'm seven now as I was then - When children die, they do not grow.

At eighteen you sleep without memories.

Loneliness feels like prison.

Separation isnt time or distance its the bridge between us finer than silk thread sharper than swords

Welcome baby it's your turn to live they're laying for you chicken pox whooping cough smallpox malaria TB heart disease cancer and so on unemployment hunger and so on train wrecks bus accidents plane crashes on-the-job injuries earthquakes floods droughts and so on heartbreak alcoholism and so on nightsticks prisons doors and so on they're laying for you the atom bomb and so on welcome baby it's your turn to live they're laying for you socialism communism and so on.

When the light of the star which flows into my eyes as a drop of gold first pierced the darkness in space, there was not a single eye on earth looking at the sky.

I've never regretted I was born too soon. I'm proud to be a child of the twentieth century. I'm satisfied to join its ranks on our side and fight for a new world.

At eighteen you don't think about memories, you tell them.

The most beautiful sea hasn't been crossed yet. The most beautiful child hasn't grown up yet. The most beautiful days we haven't seen yet. And the most beautiful words I wanted to tell you I haven't said yet.

The life of man is long, perhaps longer than necessary Or perhaps it is shorter than necessary?

My country or the stars Or my youth, what's farthest?

We can only reach our goal amid bloodletting

At eighteen the heart shoots like a pebble from a slingshot and the head doesn't sit on the shoulder.