Aleph Quotes

Don’t be intimidated by other people’s opinions. Only mediocrity is sure of itself, so take risks and do what you really want to do.

Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.

What hurts us is what heals us

Only two things can reveal life's great secrets: suffering and love.

It takes a huge effort to free yourself from memory

إننا نحاول دوماً تفسير الأمور وفق ما نريد، لا وفق ما هي عليه

Travel is never a matter of money but of courage

A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.

God only allows us to see such things when he wants something to change

To become really good at anything,you have to practice and repeat, practice and repeat, until the technique becomes intuitive

If you conquer yourself, then you conquer the world

I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me...

No one ever loses anyone. We are all one soul that needs to continue growing and developing in order for the world to carry on and for us all to meet once again.

In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike. And no two journeys along the same path are alike.

Words are tears that have been written down. Tears are words that need to be shed. Without them, joy loses all its brilliance and sadness has no end.

أحياناً نحتاج إلى أن نكون غرباء عن أنفسنا، عندئذ سينير النور في روحنا ما نحتاج إلى رؤيته

Cualquier destino, por largo y complicado que sea, consta en realidad de un solo momento: el momento en que el hombre sabe para siempre quién es

It is possible to avoid pain? Yes, but you'll never learn anything. Is it possible to know something without ever having experiencing it? Yes, but it will never truly be part of you.

In magic - and in life - there is only the present moment, the now. You can't measure time the way you measure the distance between two points. 'Time' doesn't pass. We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we're always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better, about the consequences of our actions, and about why we didn't act as we should have. Or else we think about the future, about what we're going to do tomorrow, what precautions we should take, what dangers await us around the next corner, how to avoid what we don't want and how to get what we have always dreamed of.

Sometimes you have to travel a long way to find what is near

A life without a cause is a life without effect.

If I believe I will win, then victory will believe in me.

Each time we embrace someone warmly, we gain an extra day of life.

There are those who seek the love of a woman to forget her, to not think about her.

When we're focused on what we want, things begin to slot perfectly into place.

If you want to see a rainbow you have to learn to see the rain.

Only children believe they're capable of everything.

You don't need to climb a mountain to know that it's high.

It’s what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.

To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life.

People never leave, we are always here in our past and future lives.

When we turn around & come face to face with our destiny, we discover that words (spoken) are not enough. I know so many people who are brilliant speakers but are quite incapable of practising what they preach. It's one thing to describe a situation & quite another to experience it. I realised a long time ago that a warrior in search of his dream must take his inspiration from what he actually does & not from what he imagines himself doing.

Suffering comes from desire, not from pain.

If you spend too much time trying to find out what is good or bad about someone else, you'll forget your own soul and end up exhausted and defeated by the energy you have wasted in judging others.

The rain is falling ever harder and all I can hear is the sound of the water. I'm drenched but I can't move.

We become imprisoned by our memories, and that makes our lives wretched.

He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.

Do something instead of killing time. Because time is killing you.

I learned long ago that in order to heal my wounds, I must have the courage to face up with them.

Fácilmente aceptamos la realidad, acaso porque intuimos que nada es Real

Ser inmortal es baladí; menos el hombre, todas las criaturas lo son, pues ignoran la muerte; lo divino, lo terrible, lo incomprensible, es saberse inmortal.

When a sense of dissatisfaction persists, that means it was placed there by God for one reason only: you need to change everything and move forward.

I love you because all the loves in the world are like different rivers flowing into the same lake where they meet and are transformed into a single love that becomes rain and blesses the earth.

They say that in the second before our death, each of us understands the real reason for our existence, and out of that moment, heaven or hell is born.

Déjà vu is more than just that fleeting moment of surprise, instantly forgotten because we never bother with things that make no sense. It show that time doesn't pass. It's a leap into something we have already experienced and that is being repeated.

If we seek something, that same thing is seeking us.

ان كنت ترغب في رؤية قوس قزح, فعليك أن تتعلم حب المطر.

أمران فقط يمكن لهما ان يكشفا اسرار الحياة العظمى : المعاناة والحب

All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a share past

When we feel weak, all we have to do is wait a little while. The spring returns and the winter snows melt and fill us with new energy.

Only someone who can say 'I love you' is capable of saying 'I forgive you.

I am in the Aleph, the point at which everything is in the same place at the same time. I'm at a window, looking out at the world and its secret places, poetry lost in time and words left hanging in space...sentences that are perfectly understood, even when left unspoken. Feelings that simultaneously exalt and suffocate.

Don't think about what you’ll tell people afterward. The time is here and now. Make the most of it.

Life is the train and not the station.

You can't measure time the way you measure the distance between two points.

يتعين عليك أحيانا السفر بعيدا للعثور على ماهو قريب

There is nothing very remarkable about being immortal; with the exception of mankind, all creatures are immortal, for they know nothing of death. What is divine, terrible, and incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal.

I can speak to my soul only when the two of us are off exploring deserts or cities or mountains or roads.

Visit your soul; don't visit your past.

الحالمون لا يمكن ترويضهم أبدا

I learned long ago that in order to heal my wounds, I must have the courage to face up to them. I also learned to forgive myself and correct my mistakes

Emma dropped the paper. Her first impression was of a weak feeling in her stomach and in her knees; then of blind guilt, of unreality, of coldness, of fear; then she wished that it were already the next day. Immediately afterwards she realized that that wish was futile because the death of her father was the only thing that had happened in the world, and it would go on happening endlessly.

True wisdom consists in respecting the simple things we do

I will be capable of loving, regardless of whether I am loved in return, Of giving, when I have nothing, Of working happily, even in the midst of difficulties, Of holding out my hand, even when utterly alone and abandoned, Of drying my tears, even while I weep, Of believing, even when no one believes in me.

لا حياة تكتمل من دون لمسة جنون.

This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to name it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturated the coastlines with the names of harbours, the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a continuous ribbon of text. Is the aleph, that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simultaneously, anything other than an alphabet?

A man called Ali is in need of money and asks his boss to help him. His Boss sets him a challenge: if he can spend all night at the top of a mountain, he will receive a great reward; if he fails, he will have to work for free. When he left the shop, Ali noticed that an icy wind was blowing. He felt afraid and decided to ask his best friend, Aydi, if he thought he was mad to accept the wager. After considering the matter for a moment Aydi answered, " Don't worry, I'll help you. Tomorrow night, when you're sitting on top of the mountain, look straight ahead. I'll be on top of the mountain opposite, where I'll keep a fire burning all night for you. Look at the fire and think of our friendship, and that will keep you warm. You'll make it through the night, and afterward, I'll ask you for something in return. Ali won the wager, got the money, and went to his friend's house. "you said you wanted some sort of payment in return." Aydi said, "Yes, but it isn't money. Promise that if ever a cold wind blows through my life, you will light the fire of friendship for me

دع من حولك ينمون معك

Mi carne puede tener miedo; yo, no.

When faced by any loss, there’s no point in trying to recover what has been, it’s best to take advantage of the large space that opens up before us and fill it with something new.

ستطالعنا الأسئلة ذاتها دوماً، وسنحتاج دوماً إلى الإقلاع عن تكبرنا لكي نتقبل أن قلوبنا على علم بسبب وجودنا هنا

The trouble with words is that they give us the illusory sense that we are making ourselves understood as well as understanding what others are saying. However, when we turn around and come face-to-face with our destiny, we discover that words are not enough.

Sometimes, we need to be strangers to ourselves. Then the hidden light in our soul will illuminate what we need to see.

Travelling to past lives is like making a hole in the floor and letting the flames of the fire in the apartment below scorch and burn the present

We never lose our loved ones. The accompany us; they don't disappear from our lives. We are merely in different rooms.

O God, when I listen to the voices of animals, the sounds of trees, the murmurings of water, the singing of birds, the whistling of the wind, or the boom of thunder, I see in them evidence of Your unity; I feel that You are supreme power, omniscience, supreme knowledge, and supreme justice. I recognize You, O God, in the trials I am going through. May Your pleasure be my pleasure, too. May I be Your joy, the joy that a Father feels for a son. And may I think of You calmly and with determination, even when I find it hard to say I love You.

لستُ في سلام؛ أحياناً, ادخل فترات من الصراع الداخلي يدوم اشهراً, وعندما استغرق في واقع سحري يدوم ذلك للحظات, وإلي حد يكفي لأعرف ان عالما آخر يكون, إلي حد يكفي لأصاب بإحباط

Most people need a reason to argue - you just need a place.

One day or one night—between my days and nights, what difference can there be?—I dreamed that there was a grain of sand on the floor of my cell. Unconcerned, I went back to sleep; I dreamed that I woke up and there were two grains of sand. Again I slept; I dreamed that now there were three. Thus the grains of sand multiplied, little by little, until they filled the cell and I was dying beneath that hemisphere of sand. I realized that I was dreaming; with a vast effort I woke myself. But waking up was useless—I was suffocated by the countless sand. Someone said to me: You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of the grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened. I felt lost. The sand crushed my mouth, but I cried out: I cannot be killed by sand that I dream —nor is there any such thing as a dream within a dream. — Jorge Luis Borges, The Writing of the God

معاً نخط كتاب الحياة، لقاءاتنا مرسومة من القدر، وأيدينا متشابكة فيإيماننا بأن لنا أن نحدث التغيير في هذا العالم، مل يساهم بكلمة وبجملة وبصورة، ولكن في النهاية كل ذلك يشكل معنى؛ سعادة الواحد هي سعادة الجميع

أنت تسافر ولكنك لم تترك منزلك بعد ما دمنا معاً، وستظل على هذه الحال؛ فإلى جانبك شخص يعرفك، وهذا يمنعك حساً زائفاً من الألفة. آن الأوان لتتابع وحدك، وقد تجد الوحدة ثقيلة الوطأة وتفوق الاحتمال، ولكن سيزول هذا الشعور تدريجياً حين تبقى على تواصل مع الآخرين

ابحث عن الأشخاص الذين لا يخافون من ارتكاب الأخطاء و الذين , بالتالى , يرتكبونها . لهذا السبب , لا يكون عملهم فى الغالب مقدرا , لكنهم تحديدا نوع الأشخاص الذى يغير العالم ... بعد كثير من الأخطاء , يقومون بشئ سيغير مجتمعهم تماما

We never lose our loved ones. They accompany us; merely in different rooms.

But let no one imagine that we were mere ascetics. There is no more complex pleasure than thought, and it was to thought that we delivered ourselves over.

Hell is when we look back during the fraction of a second and know that we wasted an opportunity to dignify the miracle of life. Paradise is being able to say at the moment "I made some mistakes, but I wasn't a coward. I Lived my life and did what I had to do

I've never been as happy as I am now, because I followed the signs, I was patient, and I know that this is going to change everything.

Time does not pass, it merely changes.

Como todo poseedor de una biblioteca, Aureliano se sabía culpable de no conocerla hasta el fin

On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny -- Philemon Holland's -- and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Querétaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon -- the unimaginable universe. I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity.

What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a bay horse in a vacant lot on the corner of Sarrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?

كل ما احتاج إليه في هذه اللحظة هو أن تعانقيني؛ فالعناق حركة قديمة بقدم الإنسانيةذاتها، ومعناها أبعد بكثير من لقاء جسدين. العناق يعني أنني لا أشعر بأنك تهدديني، ولا أخشى من قربي منك إلى هذه الدرجة، أستطيع أن اتسرخي، وأن أشعر بالارتياح، وأن أشعر بالحماية وبحضرة من يمكن له أن يفهمني. يقال انه في كل مرة نعانق فيها أحدا بحرارة، نكسب يوما إضافيا في الحياة. لذا رجاء ، عانقيني الآن

He remembered a story Madrigal had told him once: the human tale of the golem. It was a thing shaped of clay in the form of a man, brought to life by carving the symbol aleph into its brow. Aleph was the first symbol of an ancestral human alphabet, and the first letter of the Hebrew word truth; it was the beginning. Watching Karou rise to her feet, radiant in a fall of lapis hai, in a woven dress the colour of tangerines, with a loop of silver beads at her throat and a look of joy and relief and... love... on her beautiful face, Akiva knew that she was his aleph, his truth and beginning. His soul.

Is it possible to fix love and make it stand still in time? Well, we can try, but that would turn our lives into a hell. I haven't been married for more than 20 years to the same person, because neither she nor I have remained the same. That's why our relationship is more alive than ever. I don't expect her to behave as she did when we first met. Nor does she want me to be the person I was when I found her. Love is beyond time, or, rather, love is both time and space, but all focused on one single constantly evolving point -- the Aleph.

Only children believe they're capable of everything. They're trusting and fearless; they believe in their own power and get exactly what they want. When children grow up, they start to realize that they're not as powerful as they thought and that they need other people in order survive. Then the child begins to love and to hope his love will be requited; and as life goes on, he develops an ever-greater need to be loved in return, even if that means having to give up his power. We all end up where we are now: Grown-ups doing everything we can to be accepted and loved.

Be blessed. And just as you are transforming your own life, may you transform the lives of those around you. When they ask, do not forget to give. When they knock at your door, be sure to open it. When they lose something and come to you, do whatever you can to help them find what they have lost. First, though, ask; knock at the door and find what is missing in your life. A hunter always knows what to expect - eat or be eaten.

I receive your love and I give you mine. Not the love of a man for a woman, not the love of a father for a child, not the love of God for his creatures. But a love with no name and no explanation like a river that cannot explain why it follows a particular course, but simply flows onwards. A love that asks for nothing and gives nothing in return; it is simply there. I will never be yours and you will never be mine; nevertheless, I can honestly say: I love you

I arrive now at the ineffable core of my story. And here begins my despair as a writer. All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a shared past. How, then, can I translate into words the limitless Aleph, which my floundering mind can scarcely encompass? Mystics, faced with the same problem, fall back on symbols: to signify the godhead, one Persian speaks of a bird that somehow is all birds; Alanus de Insulis, of a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere; Ezekiel, of a four-faced angel who at one and the same time moves east and west, north and south. (Not in vain do I recall these inconceivable analogies; they bear some relation to the Aleph.) Perhaps the gods might grant me a similar metaphor, but then this account would become contaminated by literature, by fiction. Really, what I want to do is impossible, for any listing of an endless series is doomed to be infinitesimal. In that single gigantic instant I saw millions of acts both delightful and awful; not one of them occupied the same point in space, without overlapping or transparency. What my eyes beheld was simultaneous, but what I shall now write down will be successive, because language is successive. Nonetheless, I'll try to recollect what I can.

I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!

أحبك ، أحبك لان كل أنواع الحب في العالم كالأنهار الدافقة إلى البحيرة نفسها، حيث تلتقي وتتحول إلى حب أوحد يتحول بدوره إلى مطر ويبارك الأرض. أحبك كنهر يوجد الظروف الملائمة للأشجار والشجيرات والزهر لكي تنمو على ضفتيه. أحبك كنهر يروي ظمأ العطاش وينقل الناس إلى حيث يريدون . أحبك كنهر يعي أن عليه أن يتعلم كيفية تغيير تدفقه فوق الشلالات والركود في المياة الضحله. أحبك لأننا كلنا مولودون في المكان ذاته، من المنبع ذاته، الذي يزودنا بالماء بلا انقطاع. ولذا، متى شعرنا بالضعف، كل ما علينا فعله هو الانتظار قليلا. يعود الربيع، فتذوب ثلوج الشتاء وتفيض بنا طاقة . أحبك كنهر يتشكل كل قطرات منفرده في الجبال ويكبر تدريجا وينضم إلى أنهر أخرى، إلى حين يتمكن، بعد مرحلة معينة، من التدفق مجتازا أي حاجز لكي يصل إلى حيث يريد. أخذ حبك وأعطيك حبي. ليس حب رجل لامرأة، ليس حب والد لولد، ليس حب الله لمخلوقاته، بل حب لا اسم له أو تفسير، كنهر يعجز عن تفسير جريانه في مسار محدد، وإنما يجري قدما ببساطة. حب لا يطلب يأي شيء ولا يُعطي أي شيء في المقابل، إنه موجود فحسب. لن أكون ملكا لك يوما ولن تكوني ملكا لي يوما، لكن ، يمكن لي أن أقول بصراحه : أحبك،أحبك،أحبك

At my age, one should be aware of one's limits, and this knowledge may make for happiness. When I was young, I thought of literature as a game of skillful and surprising variations; now that I have found my own voice, I feel that tinkering and tampering neither greatly improve nor greatly spoil my drafts. This, of course, is a sin against one of the main tendencies of letters in this century--the vanity of overwriting-- ... I suppose my best work is over. This gives me a certain quiet satisfaction and ease. And yet I do not feel I have written myself out. In a way, youthfulness seems closer to me today than when I was a young man. I no longer regard happiness as unattainable; once, long ago, I did. Now I know that it may occur at any moment but that it should never be sought after. As to failure or fame, they are quite irrelevant and I never bother about them. What I'm out for now is peace, the enjoyment of thinking and of friendship, and, though it may be too ambitious, a sense of loving and of being loved.