"Excessive concern with religion seems to me a last resort for people who have been exhausted by life."
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Quote collection
Naguib Mahfouz quotes (page 2 of 4)
78 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"If life has no meaning, why don't we create a meaning for it?"
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"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."
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"Art is a criticism of society and life, and I believe that if life became perfect, art would be meaningless and cease to exist."
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""Death by love is fairer by far than death by illness", said Amenhotep III."
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"I started writing while I was a little boy. Maybe it's because I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday. Also, my love for good writing pushed me."
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"At my age it is unseemly to be pessimistic."
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"An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers."
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"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."
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"The writer interweaves a story with his own doubts, questions, and values. That is art."
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"Events at home, at work, in the street - these are the bases for a story."
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"God did not intend religion to be an exercise club."
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"I defend both the freedom of expression and society's right to counter it. I must pay the price for differing. It is the natural way of things."
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"Only the poor are handicapped by honor."
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"According to Islamic principles, when a man is accused of heresy, he is given the choice between repentance and punishment."
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"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."
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"I accepted the interviews and encounters that had to be held with the media, but I would have preferred to work in peace."
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"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."
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"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."
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"If the urge to write should ever leave me, I want that day to be my last."
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