I cannot live on an island of prosperity when I'm surrounded by a sea of misery.
I used to always read with a pen in my hand, as if the author and I were in a conversation.
I never minded the random scribblings of other readers, found them interesting in fact. It is a truth universally acknowledged that people write the darndest things in the margins of their books.
Certain bookworms eat books. Eat them, swear in them, spill things on them.
Reading, for me, is like this: consumptive, pleasing, calming, as much as edifying. It's how I feel after a good dinner. That's why I do it so often: It feels wonderful. The book is mind and I insert myself into it, cover it entire, ear my way through every last slash and dot. That's something you can do with a book, unlike television or movies or the Internet. You can eat it, or mark it, like a dog does on a hydrant.
We bought an apartment building and were going to live off the rent money. We rented to people who were on welfare and a lot of times they couldn't pay the rent. We wouldn't throw them out so we lost the building.
We don't say that we don't have it, we're still secular in Syria, but with the time, this secularism will be eroded.
We live in succession, in division, in parts and particles. Meantime, within man, is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.
Compassion is the chief law of human existence.