23 Quotes by Emile Habiby

Candide was an optimist, but you're a pessoptimist.""That fact," I repsonded, "Is a virtue that, above all others, distinguishes my people.""But you," he criticized again, "seem to be imitating Candide.""Don't blame me for that. Blame our way of life that hasn't changed since Voltaire's day, except that El Dorado has now come to exist on this planet.

True power is expressed in quiet confidence; it was the sea's very calmness that epitomised its mighty force.

He made me understand that there could be no release from their service until the day I died. He explained, "Your father gave it to you as his inheritance, and you will pass it onto your children. They will curse you, but our long arm will reach them nevertheless, generation after generation.

When I asked my extra-terrestrial friend why he took me in, he merely replied, "What alternative did you have?

His eyes I saw too. Large and profound, they seemed to increase in depth as the dark fell on them, then to resurface as the lighthouse beam caught them again, as if symbolising in rapid sequence the constant recurrence of night and day.

But Saeed, Saeed, the children are our only hope!

The rest - yes, that's me! The papers haven't ignored ne. How can you claim not to have heard of me? I truly am remarkable. For no paper with wide coverage, having sources, resources, advertisements, celebrity writers, and a reputation can ignore me. Those like me are everywhere - towns, villages, bars, everywhere. I am "the rest". I am remarkable indeed!

Well, the British do have the right to boast about their history, you know, especially about that great king of theirs, Ricahrd the Lionhearted. But even without our teaching you all this, they were participating in the process of rendering our country holy by spilling our blood. Conquerors, my son, consider as true history only what they have themselves fabricated.

My first ancestor, Abjar son of Abjar, mounted on his horse outside the city walls, had stared back at the tongues and shouted, "After me, the deluge!