Hamdani Arabian Quotes

admiral. Technically, all admirals come from the Arabian desert, for the word can be traced to the title of Abu Bakr, who was called Amir-al-muminin, "commander of the faithful," before he succeeded Muhammad as caliph in 632. The title Amir, or "commander," became popular soon after, and naval chiefs were designated Amir-al-ma, "commander of commanders." Western seamen who came in contact with the Arabs assumed that Amir-al was one word, and believed this was a distinguished title. By the early 13th century, officers were calling themselves amiral, which merely means "commander of." The d was probably added to the word through a common mispronunciation. ~ Robert Hendrickson

Saudi Arabian police arrested seven teenage boys for leering at women. In accordance with Saudi law, the boys will be whipped and the women will be stoned to death. ~ Tina Fey

Saudi Arabian oil production is at or very near its peak sustainable volume (if it did not, in fact peak almost 25 years ago), and is likely to go into decline in the very foreseeable future. There is only a small probability that Saudi Arabia will ever deliver the quantities of petroleum that are assigned to it in all the major forecasts of world oil production and consumption. ~ Matthew Simmons

Now "The Arabian Nights," some of which, but not nearly all, are given in this volume, are only fairy tales of the East. The people of Asia, Arabia, and Persia told them in their own way, not for children, but for grown-up people. There were no novels then, nor any printed books, of course; but there were people whose profession it was to amuse men and women by telling tales. They dressed the fairy stories up, and made the characters good Mahommedans, living in Bagdad or India. The events were often supposed to happen in the reign of the great Caliph, or ruler of the Faithful, Haroun al Raschid, who lived in Bagdad in 786-808 A.D. The vizir who accompanies the Caliph was also a real person of the great family of the Barmecides. He was put to death by the Caliph in a very cruel way, nobody ever knew why. The stories must have been told in their present shape a good long while after the Caliph died, when nobody knew very exactly what had really happened. At last some storyteller thought of writing down the tales, and fixing them into a kind of framework, as if they had all been narrated to a cruel Sultan by his wife. Probably the tales were written down about the time when Edward I. was fighting Robert Bruce. But changes were made in them at different times, and a great deal that is very dull and stupid was put in, and plenty of verses. Neither the verses nor the dull pieces are given in this book. ~ Muhsin Mahdi

Izzy was utterly convinced. Never mind Arabian horses, African cheetahs. No creature in the world could bolt so quickly as a rake confronted with the word "marriage". They ought to shout it out at footraces rather than using starting pistols.
Ready, steady ... matrimony! ~ Tessa Dare

Think of all the duties that were perfectly obvious to Paul or Matthew in that old Arabian desert that are pure nonsense to us now. All that foot washing, for example. Was it really for God's glory or just to keep the sand out of the house? ~ Barbara Kingsolver

The prominent Egyptian government minister, university professor, and writer Taha Hussein ... devoted himself to the study of pre-Islamic Arabian poetry and ended up concluding that much of that body of work had been fabricated well after the establishment of Islam in order to lend outside support to Koranic mythology ... [T]he Iranian journalist and diplomat Ali Dashti ... repeatedly took his fellow Muslims to task for not questioning the traditional accounts of Muhammad's life, much of which he called myth-making and miracle-mongering. ~ Toby Lester

A fig-tree looking on a fig-tree becometh fruitful, says the Arabian proverb. And so it is with children; their first great instructor is example. ~ Samuel Smiles

A little and a little, collected together, becomes a great deal; the heap in the barn consists of single grains, and drop and drop make the inundation. ~ Saadi

In winter darkness, the Baghdad Arabian keen blue deepness of the piercing lovely January winter's dusk
it used to tear my heart out, one stabbing soft star was in the middle of the magicalest blue, throbbing like love
I saw Maggie's black hair in this night
In the shelves of Orion her eye shades, borrowed, gleamed a dark and proud vellum somber power brooding rich bracelets of the moon rose from our snow, and surrounded the mystery. ~ Jack Kerouac

Pitch a lucky man into the Nile, says the Arabian proverb, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth! ~ Nathaniel Parker Willis

My father used to tell me that stories offer the listener a chance to escape but, more importantly, he said, they provide people with a chance to maximize their minds. Suspend ordinary constraints, allow the imagination to be freed, and we are charged with the capability of heighetned thought.
Learn to use your eyes as if they are your ears, he said, and you become connected with the ancient heritage of man, a dream world for the waking mind. ~ Tahir Shah

The whole idea of it makes me feel
Like I'm coming down with something,
Something worse than any stomach ache
Or the headaches I get from reading in bad light –
A kind of measles of the spirit
A mumps of the psyche,
A disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
But that is because you have forgotten
The perfect simplicity of being one
And the beautiful complexity introduced by two
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit

At four I was an Arabian wizard
I could make myself invisible
By drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a solider, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
Watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
Against the side of my tree house,
And my bicycle never leaned against the garage
As it does today,
All the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
As I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imagry friends,
Time to turn the first big number. ~ Billy Collins

We liberate our nation's heart inside of Indonesian independence!! Ibn Saud liberated Arabian's heart inside of Saudi Arabian independence one by one!! Stalin liberated Soviet-Russian's heart inside of Soviet one by one!! ~ Sukarno

To the traveller imbued with a feeling for the historical and poetical, so inseparately interwined in the annals of romantic Spain, the Alhambra is a much an object of devotion as is the Caaba to all true Moslems. How many legends and traditions, true and fabulous, - how many songs and ballards, Arabian and Spanish, of love and war and chivalry, are associated with this Oriental pile! ~ Washington Irving

All fanaticism is false, because it is a contradiction of the very nature of God and of Truth. Truth cannot be shut up in a single book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion. The Divine Being is eternal and universal and infinite and cannot be the sole property of the Mussulmans or of the Semitic religions only, - those that happened to be in a line from the Bible and to have Jewish or Arabian prophets for their founders. ~ Sri Aurobindo

I took a book - some Arabian tales; I sat down and endeavoured to read. I could make no sense of the subject; my own thoughts swam always between me and the page I had usually found fascinating. ~ Charlotte Bronte

In the Spanish people there is a mixture of Gothic, Frankish and Moorish blood. One can speak of the Spaniard as one would speak of a brave anarchist. The Arabian epoch-the Arabs look down on the Turks as they do on dogs-was the most cultured, the most intellectual and in every way best and happiest epoch in Spanish history. It was followed by the period of the persecutions with its unceasing atrocities. ~ Adolf Hitler

The real cause of the great upheavals which precede changes of civilisations, such as the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Arabian Empire, is a profound modification in the ideas of the peoples ... The memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human thought ... The present epoch is one of these critical moments in which the thought of mankind is undergoing a process of transformation. ~ Gustave Le Bon

It was like being at an Arabian hoedown with a band of psychedelic hillbillies (p. 171). ~ Patti Smith

It's one of the things Cam and I discussed last evening- he said it's characteristic of Hathaway women, this need for demonstrations of affection."
Amused and fascinated, Poppy made a face. "What else did he say?"
Harry's mood altered with quicksilver speed. He threw her a dazzling grin. "He compared it to working with Arabian horses... they're responsive, quick, but they need their freedom. You never master an Arabian... you become its companion." He paused. "At least, I think that's what he said. I was half dead from exhaustion, and we were drinking brandy."
"That sounds like Cam." Poppy raised her gaze heavenward. "And after dispensing this advice, he sent you to me, the horse."
Harry stopped and pulled her against him, nudging her braid aside to kiss her neck. "Yes," he whispered. "And what a nice ride it was. ~ Lisa Kleypas

When Islam swept out of the Arabian Peninsula, it became an invasive species to both the pagan and Christian areas it conquered. With it came the sexual practices of a very patriarchal, polygamist culture. While the religions it displaced were not particularly sex positive, Islamic sexual practices, on the whole, were uniformly sex negative. ~ Darrel Ray

It is the opinion of most thoughtful students of life that happiness in this world depends chiefly on the ability to take things as they come. An instance of one who may be said to have perfected this attitude is to be found in the writings of a certain eminent Arabian author who tells of a traveller who, sinking to sleep one afternoon upon a patch of turf containing an acorn, discovered when he woke that the warmth of his body had caused the acorn to germinate and that he was now some sixty feet above the ground in the upper branches of a massive oak. Unable to descend, he faced the situation equably. 'I cannot,' he observed, 'adapt circumstances to my will: therefore I shall adapt my will to circumstances. I decide to remain here.' Which he did. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The abode of the Midianites is to be looked for near the place where the city of Medina is today. This name Medina may likely be a remnant of the habitation of the Midianites there. The identification of Midian and Medina may be further substantiated by the name of the Midianite priest, Jethro. The old Arabian name of Medina is Yathrib. ~ Immanuel Velikovsky

The rejection of Western democracy derives from the same rejection of secularism but was further sharpened by the Saudi Arabian establishment's aversion to democracy's subversive streak and the threat it posed to the Saudi monarchy if unleashed. Saudi scholars such as Sheikh Bakr Ibn Abu Zaid consistently attacked democracy and the freedoms it flaunted as anti-Islamic. Mohammed Yusuf was heavily influenced by the writings of Saudi-based scholars such as Bakr Ibn Abu Zaid, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Ibn Abd-Allah Ibn Baaz (1910-99), and Sheikh Muhammad al-Amin ash Shanqiti (1907-73). As mentioned before, all of Yusuf's opponents side-stepped the issue of democracy being un-Islamic, thereby making the issue appear incontestable or settled. ~ Kyari Mohammed

At the centre of all these noble races we cannot fail to see the blond beast of prey, the magnificent blond beast avidly prowling round for spoil and victory; this hidden centre needs release from time to time, the beast must out again, must return to the wild: - Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, Homeric heroes, Scandinavian Vikings - in this requirement they are all alike. It was the noble races which left the concept of 'barbarian' in their traces wherever they went; even their highest culture betrays the fact that they were conscious of this and indeed proud of it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The Bactrian have two humps; the Arabian one only. They are swift in battle and most useful to carry burdens. This animal is extremely observant of rule and measure, for it will not move if it has a greater weight than it is used to, and if it is taken too far it does the same, and suddenly stops and so the merchants are obliged to lodge there. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Then he said: "Weep not, my daughter, but hear what I'm about to say:
You are an Arabian king, named by me a sovereign today.
From this moment on, this kingdom is yours, to do with as you may.
You who do things wisely, be calm now and compose yourself, I pray. ~ Shota Rustaveli

The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian Tales, without the merit of being entertaining, and the account of men living to eight and nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the immortality of the giants of the Mythology. ~ Thomas Paine

In this way he continued until he was fourteen years of age, when his extraordinary destiny took him by the hand, and led him, step by step, through adventures so wonderful that words can scarce describe them. ~ Arabian Nights

Past and future are the same, and we cannot change either, only know them more fully. My journey to the past had changed nothing, but what I had learned had changed everything, and I understood that it could not have been otherwise. If our lives are tales that Allah tells, then we are the audience as well as the players, and it is by living these tales that we receive their lessons. ~ Ted Chiang

This is Zemzem near Mecca. According to this, however, Hagar headed into the Arabian Peninsula rather than toward Egypt. ~ Abraham Meir Ben Ibn Ezra

The best blended Scotch in the history of the world - which was also the favourite drink of the Iraqi Baath Party, as it still is of the Palestinian Authority and the Libyan dictatorship and large branches of the Saudi Arabian royal family - is Johnnie Walker Black. Breakfast of champions, accept no substitute. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Sometimes great, banned works defy the censor's description and impose themselves on the world - 'Ulysses,' 'Lolita,' the 'Arabian Nights.' ~ Salman Rushdie

It was only by escaping into the desert that Moses and the Jews were able to solidify their identity and reemerge as a social and political force.
Jesus spent his forty days in the wilderness, and Mohammed, too, fled Mecca at a time of great peril for a period of retreat. He and just a handful of his most devoted supporters used this period to deepen their bonds, to understand who they were and what they stood for, to let time work its good. Then this little band of believers reemerged to conquer Mecca and the Arabian Peninsula and later, after Mohammed's death, to defeat the Byzantines and the Persian empire, spreading Islam over vast territories. Around the world every mythology has a hero who retreats, even to Hades itself in the case of Odysseus, to find himself. ~ Robert Greene

That the Roman empire was, like all its predecessors, a form of extortion by force, an enriching of well-connected Romans (who "make a desolation and call it peace") at the expense of hapless conquered peoples, would also not have carried much weight with most readers. Hadn't Philip of Macedon's first conquest been the seizure of the Balkan gold mines? Hadn't Alexander's last planned campaign been for the sake of controlling the lucrative Arabian spice trade? How could anyone demur over such things? What would be the point of holding out against the nature of man and of the universe itself? Augustus set up in the midst of the Roman Forum a statue of himself that loomed eleven times the size of a normal man,10 and similarly awesome statues were erected in central shrines throughout the empire. Augustus was not a normal man; he was a god, deserving of worship. And, like all gods, he was terrifying. ~ Thomas Cahill

He who eats alone chokes alone. ~ H.L. Mencken

Since the Roman Judeo-Christian heritage is pure Aryan in its origins, its adherents had no clue how to unlock the language contained in the Semitic book (i.e., Bible) that fell into their possession. Whether in Greek or in Latin, the word got translated into 'Unicorn', 'horn' or 'Rhinoceros'in total disregard to the existence of that very same animal which has that name, the Arabian Oryx. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim

We shall remember ...... Damascus, the "Pearl of the East", the pride of Syria, the fabled garden of Eden, the home of princes and genii of the Arabian Nights,the oldest metropolis on Earth, the one city in all the world that has kept its name and held its place and looked serenely on while the Kingdoms and Empires of four thousand years have risen to life, enjoyed their little season of pride and pomp, and then vanished and been forgotten ~ Mark Twain

From the book he carefully tears out several maps, and in this light Afghanistan's mountains and hills and restlessly branching corridors of rock appear as though the pages are crumpled up, and there is a momentary wish in him to smooth them down. Laser-guided bombs are falling onto the pages in his hands, missiles summoned from the Arabian Sea, from American warships that are as long as the Empire State Building is tall. ~ Nadeem Aslam

Fuel-efficient my big engine is not. I drove 38 miles and burned through more than a quarter-tank of expensive premium gas. Every time I accelerated I could sense a Saudi Arabian somewhere was smiling. ~ C.D. Payne

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move. ~ Benjamin Franklin

...The Arabs I rode herding cattle with your father in the fifties and sixties would do a full day's work for twenty years, seven days a week, and retire sound." He snorted. "The drive now is for pretty lawn ornaments. The Arabian horses were originally bred as weapons of war, and now they are artwork. ~ Patricia Briggs

How different this world to the one about which I used to read, and in which I used to live! This is one peopled by demons, phantoms, vampires, ghouls, boggarts, and nixies. Names of things of which I knew nothing are now so familiar that the creatures themselves appear to have real existence. The Arabian Nights are not more fantastic than our gospels; and Lempriere would have found ours a more marvelous world to catalog than the classical mythical to which he devoted his learning. Ours is a world of luprachaun and clurichaune, deev and cloolie, and through the maze of mystery I have to thread my painful way, now learning how to distinguish oufe from pooka, and nis from pixy; study long screeds upon the doings of effreets and dwergers, or decipher the dwaul of delirious monks who have made homunculi from refuse. Waking or sleeping, the image of some uncouth form is always present to me. What would I not give for a volume by the once despised 'A. L. O. E' or prosy Emma Worboise? Talk of the troubles of Winifred Bertram or Jane Eyre, what are they to mine? Talented authoresses do not seem to know that however terrible it may be to have as a neighbour a mad woman in a tower, it is much worse to have to live in a kitchen with a crocodile. This elementary fact has escaped the notice of writers of fiction; the re-statement of it has induced me to reconsider my decision as to the most longed-for book; my choice now is the Swiss Family Robinson. In it I have no doubt I should find ho ~ Wirt Gerrare

Scheherazade, of course, was always in the back of my mind, because she's also a storyteller identified as female who tells a lot of anti-female stories. There's a parade in The Arabian Nights of sorceresses, adulteresses, ghouls, sirens, harridans. ~ Marina Warner

I have heard that the Saudi Arabians are paying Greenpeace to campaign against Nuclear Power. It wouldn't surprise me at all. ~ James Lovelock

If you want to ascend like the Prophet to the sky of immortality, know this very well: Fasting is your Arabian stallion. ~ Rumi