Naguib Mahfouz

Do not assume anything. Clear your mind must be if you are to discover the real villains behind this plot.

A man’s personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.

We cannot see things that stare us in the face until the hour comes that the mind is ripened.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

A sudden bold and unexpected question does many times surprise a man and lay him open.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man, you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that.

Never be bored, and you will never be boring.

There is only one thing about which I shall have no regrets when my life ends. I have savored to the full all the small, daily joys. The bright sunshine on the breakfast table; the smell of the air at dusk; the sound of the clock ticking; the light rains that start gently after midnight; the hour when the family come home; Sunday-evening tea before the fire! I have never missed one moment of beauty, not even taken it for granted. Spring, summer, autumn, or winter. I wish I had failed as little in other ways.

He gains everyone’s approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful.

I heartily accept the motto,That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

The first wealth is health.

All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.