Yahia Lababidi Quotes

"The thoughts we choose to act upon define us to others, the ones we do not define us to ourselves."

"Impulses we attempt to strangle only develop stronger muscles."

"It is wise to know oneself, if only to add to the sum of human knowledge."

"The biographer's art is that of confessing through the mask of another's personality."

"Temptation: seeds we are forbidden to water, that are showered with rain."

"In life, as in love, graceful leave-taking is the epitome of gratitude."

"A good listener helps us overhear ourselves."

"Myths are history, too; the history of the human imagination."

"Those for whom the natural is extraordinary tend to find the extraordinary natural."

"Nothing in the theatre engages the suicide so much as the Exit door."

"Art: trail of breadcrumbs left by artists, for themselves and others, to remember the Way"

"With enigmatic clarity, Life gives us a different answer each time we ask her the same question."

"The more we prattle with others the less of a chance we have for a serious conversation with ourselves."

"To be self taught is to have learned from oneself."

"We stand to learn countless lessons every hour, if we did not forget from minute to minute."

"Just because a monument takes a lifetime to build, does not mean it cannot take a moment to destroy."

"Free will is bad advice."

"To better appreciate our parameters, we must act as though all were permitted."

"Looking death in the eye is like staring into the sun; for a while, you see its impression everywhere, stare too long and you see nothing else."

"The notion of family is merely a comforting fallacy. In truth, there are only relative strangers."

"We all have handicaps. The difference is that some of us must reveal ours, while others must conceal theirs, to be treated with mercy."

"The insolence of youth is the arrogance of new life encroaching."

"An affinity exists between extremes, they are equi-distant from moderation."

"Take two opposites, connect the dots, and you have a straight line."

"Opposites attract, similarities endure."

"Performing human tricks, daily, is the consequence of a lifetime of animal training."

"Unlike snakes, venom poisons most those persons who carry it."

"Ambiguity: the bastard child of Creativity and Cowardice."

"An aphorist is not one who writes in aphorisms but one who thinks in aphorisms."

"Liar: one who claims to tell the truth, always."

"Genius is an alternative lifestyle."

"The harshest critics are those denied access to the work; it is the same with life's critics."

"Thinkers are marked men, branded apart from life. But, unlike other brands, theirs burns for life."

"Our metaphysical eyes are expert at collapsing distances - seeing through the apparent to the infinite."

"Metaphysics: a propensity for metaphor, a fury for allegory"

"The discretion of metaphysics reveals itself in courtship. "

"If one is otherwise engaged, it tends to leave them alone."

"Uncertainty is the starting and ending point of Knowledge."

"Like cars in amusement parks, our direction is often determined through collisions."

"Intensity: vast emotions condensed."

"Revelation: the discovery of a new application for an old truth. "

"Truth can be like a large, bothersome fly - brush it away and it returns buzzing."

"Two things that stain the mind, long after they have stained the hands: blood and newspapers."

"The small spirit is quick to misperceive an insult, the large spirit slow to receive a compliment."

"Even the most imaginative writers are merely scribes to their inspiration."

"Inspiration is the revelation of hidden relations; Wisdom, the cultivation of that Inspiration."

"What is considered eccentric in this world is common place in another."

"Certain strains of writing are a form of life-support, stretched across space and time, to sustain world-weary readers."

"However jeweled the mind, we also think through its defects."

"Time heals old wounds only because there are new wounds to attend to."

"The human animal is best revealed to others in their natural environment, yet best revealed to themselves outside it."

"Optimist and pessimist each shut an eye to tell their half truths."

"Wars are the side-effects of nationalism."

"Style is thought put to music."

"Nothing is without its price, free-thinking included."

"Self-consciousness: a weed in the garden of self awareness."

"Envious of natural disasters, men have created their own."

"Wit: the pounce of a restless insight."

"Solitude: the imprisoned soul's imprisonment of the body."

"Solitude tests our weaknesses and intensifies our strengths, then pits them against one another."

"We are never alone in our weaknesses, it is only in our strengths that we sometimes are."

"Aphorism: what is worth quoting from the soul's dialogue with itself."

"With despair, as with night-vision, the eyes soon grow accustomed to the dark."

"Life is a time-release capsule granting us only glimpses of ourselves at a time."

"Our past shadows us, sometimes hiding behind our backs and other times entering the room before us."

"Paradise, as a symbol, represents what we are denied in our earthly existence. To the thinker, this means: the certainty of answers."

"Philosophies, like roadmaps, are not to be consulted whilst driving."

"Denial is by no means a rare psychological malady; most of us live in denial of death."

"Awakening: to see and hear the old with new eyes and ears."

"Awaking: waiting at the platform of existence for one's particular train of consciousness to arrive from far-away lands."

"Marrying for looks is like buying books for their pictures - a good idea, if one cannot read."

"Reading a great work is being granted an audience with a great mind."

"To hurry pain is to leave a classroom still in session. To prolong pain is to remain seated in a vacated classroom and miss the next lesson."

"Miracles are proud creatures; they will not reveal themselves to those who do not Believe."

"Intuition: generous deposits made to our account by an unknown benefactor."

"A small curiosity is petty, but a great curiosity philosophic."

"Morality is only permitting others to behave as we behave, when we behave."

"As children, we played hide and seek with one another, as adults with ourselves."

"Snakes and ladders: the game of organized religions."

"Religion is faith harnessed."

"Unanswered prayers are nevertheless imperishable. They are merely deposited into some eternal account, accumulating interest."

"We search for signs when we are lost, spiritually."

"Spiritual Asthma: yearning tempered by shortage of breath."

"Spirituality is to religion what dreams are to reality: ethereal, and ungovernable by earthly laws."

"To speak of spiritual intimations is a kind of kiss-and-tell."

"History does not repeat itself, human nature does."

"Our wisdom always mocks us, since it knows more than we can."

"We are cruelest when we ought to be kindest: when someone is losing a battle or war, we've waged and won before."

"Rely on the greed of need to get what it wants"

"It is one of love's curious laws that we only permit others to love us to the extent we do ourselves. "

"If Love, as they say, is blind then, Lust must be deaf, dumb and blind."

"Modernism is to literature what Existentialism is to philosophy: a state of emergency."

"Idealist: lawyer who cannot hear his client, Life, confessing her guilt."

"The most consummate actors are too accomplished on life's stage to risk exposing themselves on film."

"Self-image: self-deception."

"The regrettable thing about insecurity is how dearly everyone else pays for it."

"Time forbids attachments. Clinging to a particular time is courting madness. "

"Idol worship: a perversion of self-worship."