100 Quotes by Amin Maalouf

Our ancestors derived less from life than we do, but they also expected much less and were less intent on controlling the future. We are of the arrogant generations who believe a lasting happiness was promised to us at birth. Promised? By whom?

I am not one of those for whom faith is simply fear of judgement. How do I pray? I study a rose, I count the stars, I marvel at the beauty of creation and how perfectly ordered it is, at man, the most beautiful work of the Creator, his brain thirsting for knowledge, his heart for love, and his senses, all his senses alert or gratified.

... we die, just as we were born, at the edge of a road not of our choosing.

En chacun de nous existe un Mr Hyde; le tout est d’empêcher que les conditions d'émergence du monstre ne soient rassemblées.

Ceux qui ne pourront pas assumer leur propre diversité se retrouveront parfois parmi les plus virulents des tueurs identitaires, s'acharnant sur ceux qui représentent cette part d'eux-mêmes qu'ils voudraient faire oublier. Une "haine de soi" dont on a vu de nombreux exemples à travers l'Histoire...

...it's better to wake up amid the pangs of desire than amid those of remorse.

Nothing is born of nothing, least of all knowledge, modernity, or enlightened thought; progress is made in tiny surges, in successive laps, like an endless relay race. But there are links without which nothing would be passed on, and for that reason, they deserve the gratitude of all who benefited from them.

The past is bound to be fragmentary, bound to be reconstructed, bound to be reinvented. It serves only to collect the truths of today. If our present is the child of the past, our past is the child of the present. And the future will be the harvester of our bastard offspring.

By living exclusively for the present, we let ourselves be hemmed in by an ocean of death. Conversely, by reviving the past, we enlarge our living space.