Naguib Mahfouz Quotes

14 Sourced Quotes

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

Naguib Mahfouz
God did not intend religion to be an exercise club.

Naguib Mahfouz
According to Islamic principles, when a man is accused of heresy, he is given the choice between repentance and punishment.

Naguib Mahfouz
He seemed to be waiting for a miracle to save him from the depths his life had reached and take him to a land of dreams.

Naguib Mahfouz
A marriage is like a company with equal partners. No one rules. If there is a disagreement, the more intelligent of the two should override.

Naguib Mahfouz
The calendar has a magic that makes us imagine a memory can be resurrected and revived, but nothing returns.

Naguib Mahfouz
Voices were blended and intermingled in a tumultuous swirl around which eddied laughter, shouts, the squeaking of doors and windows, piano and accordion music, rollicking handclaps, a policeman's bark, braying, grunts, coughs of hashish addicts and screams of drunkards, anonymous calls for help, raps of a stick, and singing by individuals and groups.

Naguib Mahfouz
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.

Naguib Mahfouz
Nothing records the effects of a sad life so graphically as the human body.

Naguib Mahfouz
Inwardly art is a means of expurgation, outwardly a means of battle, incumbent on men born and reared in sin and determined to rebel against it. Nothing else matters.

Naguib Mahfouz
Visit me once each year, for it's wrong to abandon people forever.

Naguib Mahfouz
It's not surprising that truly humanitarian manifestos originate frequently in minority circles or with people whose consciences are troubled by the problems of minorities.

Naguib Mahfouz
I found myself in a sea in which the waves of joy and sorrow were clashing against each other.

Naguib Mahfouz
It may be unhealthy, but I feel that without literature my life would have no meaning.

Naguib Mahfouz