Nizar Qabbani Quotes

Every time I kiss you
After a long separation
I feel
I am putting a hurried love letter
In a red mailbox.

Some are like the Moon, good looking, but only when they're away from you.

A tragedy, when a mature mind and a romantic heart are in the same body.

We need an angry generation, A generation to plow the horizons

Our enemies did not cross our borders They crept through our weaknesses like ants.

There are some people that we didn't forget, but we don't smile any more when they're mentioned.

And the writing is still : to you, with you, about you, because of you and for you.

Our shouting is louder than our actions,
Our swords are taller than us,
This is our tragedy.
In short
We wear the cape of civilisation
But our souls live in the stone age

There is who loves you quietly, and respects you quietly, and wishes you privately, and walks away when he sees you busy with someone other than him, and his ego restrains him from getting near you, and contents himself with the love for the sake of love

And I fear that my place gets taken by some other one, very lucky and not too shy, who flirts with your eyes while I'm the one who's crazy about them.

O Sultan, my master, if my clothes are ripped and torn it is because your dogs with claws are allowed to tear me.

The female doesn't want a rich man or a handsome man or even a poet, she wants a man who understands her eyes if she gets sad, and points to his chest and say : 'Here is your home country.

In the end, forgetting is nothing but turning a page in the book of life. It may seem an easy matter, but as long as you can't tear it, you will keep on stumbling upon it between each season of your life.

The word is a bouncing ball The ruler throws from his balcony. The word has been a shot of morphine. Rulers calm their people with speeches.

Light is more important than the lantern,
The poem more important than the notebook

Woman does not emerge from a man's rib, not ever, it's he who emerges from her womb.

Because my love for you is beyond words, I decided to shut up.

أرقى النفوس هي التي تجرعت الألم فتجنبت أن تذيق الآخرين مرارته

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The finest souls are those who gulped pain and avoided making others taste it.

We lost the war and it is not a surprise because we entered it with everything Eastern of the illusions of speeches. We invoke Antar and yet cannot slay a fly, because we entered it with the logic of the reed and the flute.

Days will pass, and you'll abandon things you were addicted to, and leave someone, and cancel a dream, and finally, accept a reality.

The sword has spoke the truth - in authority and wisdom - only the sword O Damascus is certain!

In the summer I stretch out on the shore And think of you. Had I told the sea What I felt for you, It would have left its shores, Its shells, Its fish, And followed me.

Love in the Arab world is like a prisoner, and I want to set (it) free. I want to free the Arab soul, sense and body with my poetry. The relationships between men and women in our society are not healthy.

During times of war.
I want to say:
I only love you,
And I cling you,
Like the peel clings to a pomegranate,
Like the tear clings to the eye,
Like the knife clings to the wound.

What we feel is beyond words. We should be ashamed of our poems.

When I wiped you from the book of memory, I did not know I was striking out half my life

Dive into the sea, or stay away

We killed you and it was not new for us, we killed the companions of the Prophet and the friends of God. O how many Messengers did we slay? O how many imams? We killed you and you prayed the night prayer, as all of our days are struggle - and all of our days are Karbala.

It's painful to listen to the barking of dogs.

Life doesn't stop after losing someone, but it goes on without them differently.

Had I told the sea what I felt for you, it would have left its shores, its shells, its fish, and followed me.
- Nizar Qabbani